


The Krypt

by Keyblader41996



Category: Mortal Kombat (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Krypt, Mortal Kombat X - Freeform, The Krypt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-05
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2018-09-06 18:30:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 39,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8764270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keyblader41996/pseuds/Keyblader41996
Summary: After losing contact with an all-star recon team including Kenshi, Jax, Raiden, Sub-Zero, and Master Hasashi, General Blade sends Cassie and her team to investigate. They have no idea what this uncharted Krypt has in store for them.





	1. Chapter 1

They crawled like crippled insects, scuttling closer and closer.

Falling all over each other. Trampling each other. Lurching. Reeling.

Kenshi couldn't see them, or even sense them, without Sento. There was nothing there to sense. But he could hear them. He could hear them drag their rotten bodies across the sensitive blade where he abandoned it in their flight. He could hear their bare teeth chattering in anticipation, their jaws snapping. He could hear the whisper of the wind through their thin, delicate hair. He could hear chunks of dead flesh squelch and splat as it peeled away and hit the snow. He could hear the slither of whatever was left of their insides tugging on the white powder. Maggots wriggling. Dirt breaking as more ripped themselves free, howling in pain or pleasure. He couldn't tell.

He could smell their decay. Centuries of putrefaction. Of molder. Dense, cloying, vile. Unholy. Like rotten eggs. Sulfur. As soon as the breeze hit and he sucked in a breath it stuck to his nose, stuck to his throat. Coating. He resisted the urge to retch, blindfold luckily soaking up the tears that burned his eyes. Desperate for air. Brittle bones crunching and falling away at the slightest touch, and yet they continued their advance. The fabric of Hanzo's shirt slipped through his fingers and he panicked, scrabbling blindly for someone to hold on to. "Hanzo?"

"Here, friend," he grunted in front of him, hurling a fireball at the general mass.

He sensed all of them. He heard the smooth hiss of Sub-Zero's ice. Jax's metal fists hitting things. Raiden's long, drawn-out cries of exertion and the crackles of lightning all around them. Screams of pain. Kung Lao and Liu Kang's high-pitched cries and the sounds of their fists breaking their pursuers.

Sento drowned out all of them.

It called to him, _screamed_  to him, urged his very _soul_ to retrieve it. Begged him and every moral and ethic nerve in his body to not leave the talisman, to _never_  leave his ancestors. Their screams, their wails blocked out his other senses. Filled his ears. Hundreds of souls, crying all at once. In hundreds of different pitches and hundreds of different speeds and urgencies. They fixated his mind, ghosting back and forth until they fired instead of his synapses. Their faces projected themselves behind his lids and burned themselves there. His gut twisted, his heart bled in sorrow. He couldn't leave them. They _commanded_  him. They hypnotized him. They seduced him. Sento consumed his mind, lying there in the snow beneath the writhing floor of undead. He couldn't leave it . . . Well, maybe if he made a break for it, he could . . . If he didn't stop, if he made an energy shield and trampled over whatever he had to, he could . . .

He very nearly obeyed, pushing past whoever backed into him - Hanzo, but someone grabbed his arm. Someone with skin, he noted in relief, albeit cold skin. "What are you doing?!" Sub-Zero yelled. He gently pulled Kenshi's arm, inching them back step-by-step. He heard metal on metal, heard Jax's slight grunt of pain. They stopped moving. And he knew.

He knew they were cornered against the graveyard fence.

Sento screamed his name. His warrior ancestors let out a screeching chorus so loud in his ears and his mind that it pained him. He staggered back, careening straight into Sub-Zero's arms. " _TAKAHASHI KENSHIIIIIIIiiiiiiiii . . ._ "

He pushed against him. "Let me go!"

"No!"

"But Sento! I cannot leave it-"

He leaned too close to the mob. Lunging forward, a slimy, boney hand clamped around his outstretched wrist. A panicked cry tore itself from his lips and he flailed violently to throw off the creature. He sensed a surge of power, the hair on his neck and arms rose, and the monster holding onto him exploded. Bits and flecks of rotten gore and things he didn't want to guess spattered his face and lips.

"Leave it, Takahashi Kenshi!" Raiden cried. His voice pointed away and back towards Kenshi. He was searching for a way out.

Kenshi knew.

There was no way out. Not while Raiden couldn't teleport. Not while Hanzo could only take one person at a time.

There was no way out.

* * *

 

Cassie's palm collided into Jin's cheek with a sharp _smack_! She knew it was a good hit - she threw her shoulder into it and everything! So hard she spun him completely around. Fire erupted in her hand and fingers like a volcano and she hopped back, shaking out her hand in surprise. "Geez, Jin, I hit you so hard I hurt _myself_! What do you stuff in those chubby cheeks?"

He staggered around, wobbling like a top. As soon as he regained his balance he growled in pain and frustration through his teeth. "Impressive, Cass. The bitch slap. Very classy," he muttered, rubbing the five-star welt already reddening on his cheek.

Her confident smirk dropped like she was slapped. She sneered at him, "You're just jealous!"

"Of what?"

" _You_ can't do the bitch slap or you'll look like a douche!"

"You wanna come over here and see if I care?"

"Hey, JACQUI!" Takeda yelled out, too loud and obvious to be talking only to her. "Do you think they REALIZE their sparring matches consist of eighty percent trash talk and only twenty percent, y'know, SPARRING?" He shot pointed glances at each of them.

"You know, I don't think they do, Takeda," she said lightly, shaking her head. "Kinda bums me out!"

Jin turned away from Cassie to fire back. Big mistake. "Oh, like you two're ones to talk! When you two spar all you do is sweet talk each other-"

Cassie sprinted forward and lowered her shoulder like a line backer, barreling into his stomach. A weak scream was all he had to show his surprise before the blow knocked his breath out of him, and he went down under her in a tangle of flailing brown patterns. His back and head hit the floor of the training room hard, his staff clattered from his hand. She straddled his diaphragm, jamming her knees into his arms to hold him down. Ripping both her guns from the holsters, she twirled them once around her finger before pointing them level with Jin's eyes.

"You're done," she said.

He blinked hard through his fog and instinctually started to squirm, to break free of her hold, but she shoved the guns closer, nearly touching his eyeballs. Jin froze as soon as he saw them, lips unconsciously curling up into a childish pout.

"I _said_ you're done," Cassie snarled. Jin opened his mouth for one last jab, but a dangerous glint in Cassie's eyes must have convinced him otherwise. He nodded grudgingly.

"Fine. I yield."

Cassie rocked back and sat on his stomach to gloat, holding her guns out over him. She hit the release and the empty magazines slid out and clattered on Jin's chest.

"Okay, okay, you won. Now get off," Jin wheezed. "You're heavier than you look. Been stealing cake from the mess hall?"

She scowled down at him for a moment, but the light grin on Jin's face told her he was joking. She clamored off of him and helped him up, chuckling lightly. "Good match, Jin."

"Yeah, you too. I won't go easy on you next time."

"Me either," she countered evenly. She gestured to Takeda and Jacqui. "You two want the floor?"

"Nah," Takeda said, shaking his head. "Jacqui and I are going to go bother General Blade. I wanna know if she's heard from dad yet."

"He's only been on that mission for, like, a week," Cassie said. "He probably hasn't had time to report in yet."

"Yeah, that could be, but we haven't heard anything from my dad, either," Jacqui told them. "That's weird for him. He usually calls in the second he can, and after a week. . . I'm not worried yet, just a little curious."

"His comm device could've busted, too. You never know," Jin said, shrugging.

Cassie shook her head. "Seems unlikely, considering Kenshi never called in either," she said matter-of-factly.

Takeda squared his shoulder to her. "So, what? Are you saying you think something happened?" he questioned, giving her a hard glare in Jacqui's defense. "There're tons of places where comm devices don't work. They could've been sent somewhere deep in Outworld, or the Netherrealm."

"I'm not saying anything happened, just that it's weird for neither of them to have called in. Calm down," she replied, squaring her own shoulders and stepping towards him.

"That's what I'm thinking. I just wanna be sure," Jacqui responded calmly, hoping to end what may turn into a dispute. For good measure she took a cautious step in between the two of them. "I'm not asking General Blade to tell me the specifics of their mission, just where they went. She can tell me that, right?"

"She _can_. Not sure if she _will_ ," Cassie sighed. "I'll go with you. Batting my eyelashes never really got me anywhere with her, but it can't hurt, right?"


	2. Chapter 2

From Takeda's experience, the hardest part of talking to General Blade was finding the woman.

He supposed he understood - she had a really, really important job to do as General of Special Forces. She had to be constantly on the move, always handing out orders and missions, managing the refugees and the camp, yada yada. And maybe he was being a little bit of a brat, expecting her to drop everything just for him and Jacqui. Yeah, he understood, but he didn't have to like it. All he really wanted to see if she heard from Kenshi. And wandering aimlessly through the camp searching for a woman who was never in the same place for more than three minutes at a time was driving him crazy.

"Okay, not here. Maybe she's in the recon tent?" Cassie offered. She'd been repeating the same sentence over and over, just switching out places at the end. He was really sick of it. Whether he realized it or not the anticipation was building for finding out Kenshi and Jax's whereabouts. There was nothing to suggest they were in trouble, but hearing nothing to the contrary wasn't reassuring at all.

" _What's wrong_?" Jacqui suddenly thought, projecting it for him to read.

" _Hm? Nothing_ ," he tried to assure her.

All she did was lift an eyebrow skeptically. She knew. He'd never slip anything past her. " _I can practically hear you fuming in there_."

He sighed. " _This is a waste of time. It's lot of trouble for a small tidbit of information she may not even give us. And, I won't lie. I am a little bit worried now_."

" _Me too. I've been thinking about it all day. As hard as I try I can't stop thinking that the worst could always happen. We never know_."

" _Right. We never know. I'm starting to think I don't want to know since this is taking so long_ -"

"There!" Cassie yelled, startling both of them. They followed her outstretched hand to the opposite end of the camp, strolling towards the cement barracks. "I think she's going to her office! Score!"

"Uh-oh. She's strutting, guys. She's got her purpose walk on. Tread lightly," Jin sneered. Each of them chuckled, and as if General Blade heard them her head swiveled eerily to look right at the four of them. Cassie waved sheepishly, and she kept walking.

"Okay, so that was rude. Maybe she's busy," Jacqui offered.

" _Pft_!" Cassie snorted. "You always give everyone the benefit of the doubt, don't you? She's probably just pissed about something. Let's follow her. This is important."

Takeda smiled triumphantly down at Jacqui. "Finally," he breathed. She nodded in reply, and the two of them followed Jin and Cassie.

They trailed behind Sonya at a distance across the camp, and by that they followed as fast as they could with how fast she was walking. The barracks were like a maze, Takeda thought. The whole structure was one level, set in a spider-like formation, with the mess hall in the center. Branching directly out to the sides were the training rooms, and other communally used facilities. Off of each corner were the residence quarters for all the soldiers. Each hallway had about 5 rooms on each side before the halls switched directions and had another 5 or so before switching again to fit in the perimeter. Like a lopsided H. And, between each last half-leg of the H, another long hallway connected each side to each other. General Blade's and all the officers' quarters were separate from the whole structure, standing alone off the center of the refugee camp hub.

And even their quarters were like a maze.

They turned so many corners, passed so many identical doors and corridors, that he was lost within minutes. And, he noticed, each corridor had a camera at the end of it. By the time they reached her door it was already shut with her in it.

"Wait, is that a keypad?" Takeda asked as they approached the door.

They all crowded around it. "What? Since when does mom have an access code?" Cassie said, gently touching the keypad. Almost immediately an error message popped up on the screen.

"Be careful. We're on camera," Takeda muttered, pointing to the corner of the hallway. He sighed. "I'm guessing you don't know what the code is, then?"

"Uuuuuh . . . " she trailed off, shrugging. She typed the numbers to spell CAGE, and the error flashed again. "BLADE, maybe?"

Error.

"Nope," Jin said. "Well this sucks!"

"I mean, it makes sense. This _is_ the General's office," Jacqui offered. "Guys, seriously though, let's just knock. We just saw her go in there." She gently nudged Cassie to the side and lightly knocked on the door. "General Blade?"

They waited for a few seconds. No answer.

"Knock again. Louder," Takeda told her. "Maybe she just didn't hear you."

"General Blade? It's Specialist Briggs."

No answer.

"MAAAAAAHM!" Cassie yelled, furiously pounding the side of her fist off the door instead of her knuckles. She put her ear to the door. " . . . Oh, come ON, mom! I know you're in there-"

The door flew open.

The first words out of General Blade's mouth were, "I'm busy."

Jacqui shot Cassie an annoyed look.

"Um, well-" Takeda started.

"What do you want? Is this an emergency?"

"Well no, but-"

"Then it can wait. I'm busy."

" _KKRSH_! General Blade," her comm device sputtered. "The S  & R team you ordered is on standby, awaiting your orders-" She visibly started, her eyes widened and she shot panicked glances at the four of them before she could control her reaction.

Takeda knew, just knew, it had something to do with Kenshi.

Snatching her device from her hip she yelled into it, "I told you to cancel it! Geez . . . " she huffed.

"Roger." The damage was done. She sighed tiredly, folding her hands behind her back as if expecting the bombardment of questions.

"Search and Rescue . . . is that for my dad?" Takeda asked, searching her face. Afraid of the confirmation he could potentially find there but also desperate to know now. He wanted to read her, to try and glean the information from her himself, and it took every ounce of his willpower to not try.

"That's classified."

His willpower crumbled pathetically. " _Okay, sorry, General Blade_ ," he thought to himself. He closed his eyes, placing himself within his own mind. He ghosted his consciousness closer and closer to hers, actually imagining himself as a tangible forcefield of power directing itself to her. But as soon as he actually touched her mind, his vision went black. "Wait, what?" She had a wall like cement built around her mind. There was no way he would get through without effort.

"How are you blocking me-" he spat before he could help himself. " _Aw, shit_!"

General Blade's eyes widened. "You tried to read me?!"

He clamped his mouth shut, too embarrassed to answer after ratting himself out.

"I ought to have you court-martialed-"

He looked to Jacqui for help, and she luckily changed the subject. "Why is it classified?" she protested, "All we wanna know is if you heard from them yet!"

"That's. classified," she enunciated slowly. She shot Takeda one last, 'This isn't over,' glance and turned to glare at Jacqui instead. "Specialist," she added. A reminder for them to remember their rank against hers.

"Awww, come on, mom!" Cassie whined. "We're not asking for specifics! Just if you heard from them-"

"Sergeant! That's classified." Cassie's lip unconsciously curled into a childish pout. She lowered her head and glared at General Blade. Unfortunately, General Blade leveled her eyes and shot her own glare back, refusing to back down. "Are we clear?"

Jacqui submitted bitterly. "Yes, ma'am," she muttered.

"Come on, guys," Jin said. "Let's go."

"Takeda!"

"Yes, ma'am?" he choked out, looking over his shoulder to avoid looking at her.

"No, look at me!" she ordered.

He spun around and looked at her chin.

"If you ever pull a stunt like that on me again, I'll tie you up and hang you by your ankles and let Interrogation have their way with you. Do you understand?"

His anger, whether it was at General Blade for not divulging the information, or himself for telling on himself, very nearly made him defiant. "Yeah right!" entered his head. He opened his mouth to say it, but when he looked in her narrowed eyes, saw her set jaw, her stern stare, he knew she was serious. She was very, very serious. A dangerous, primal glint in her eyes burrowed into his soul and struck fear in his heart.

"Yes, ma'am."

General Blade shut herself back in her office behind them, and Cassie flipped off the door. As soon as they were out of earshot she gently punched the wall. "Well that fucking sucked!"

"Do you think that S & R is for our dads?" Jacqui asked.

"I don't know," Cassie sighed solemnly, dropping the usual snark in her tone. "I hope not. We're just gonna have to assume they can't talk."

The four of them fell silent, and Takeda used the opportunity to try and reenforce that his dad, and Jacqui's, was probably fine. He imagined Kenshi flourishing Sento, the blue blade making ethereal arcs around him as he swung it. He imagined whatever they were fighting, oni or whatever, falling dead at his feet. He imagined Kenshi hurling enemies telekinetically across the battlefield. And besides, he had Jax with him. He was fine.

" _I mean, I could always get us in._ "

Takeda heard Jin's thought whether or not he intended it to be heard. "Jin, no!" he said.

"What?" he said, feigning innocence.

"We are not breaking in to General Blade's office!"

"WHAT?!" Jacqui and Cassie yelled in unison.

Jin shrugged, leaning casually back against the wall and crossing his arms. "Who said anything about that?" he said, shooting Takeda a pointed glare. He flicked his eyes up to the camera and thought back to him, " _Come on, aren't you even a little bit curious now? What mission did they go on that Kenshi and Jax both need S & R? Besides, Kung Lao went on that mission, too. I'd like to know as well_."

" _We don't even know if it's for them! And I'd really like to think it's not_!"

" _We'll never know unless we try to find out!_ "

" _And if we're caught?_ "

" _You're forgetting that for a majority of my life I was a professional thief. Breaking into things is my specialty! We won't get caught_."

" _There're cameras everywhere!_ "

" _What's your point? We take them out before we go_!"

"Guys . . . " Jacqui whined. "What are you talking about?"

" _Jin, I don't like it! Do you understand how much trouble we'll be in?_ "

" _If we get caught!_ " he argued, raising his eyebrows at Takeda.

" _You mean to tell me General Blade won't notice a whole freakin' mission folder that's gone missing?"_

Jin shook his head. " _We'll be fine! We won't have it for more than 20 minutes. We'll look through it and take it back. Listen, I'll have that door picked and busted open in less than a minute - even with the keypad. Cassie or Jacqui can take out the camera before we begin, and the other watches the rear. I'll be in and out in no time with the file folder, then we split._ "

" _Where are the file folders, hm_?"

" _This is a recent mission, so probably somewhere within reach. You'll come in with me and look_!"

" _I'm telling you I want no parts of this_!"

"Let's go somewhere where there're no cameras to talk," Jin said.

"No! We're not talking about this!" he protested.

"Yes! Yes we are!" said Cassie. "I wanna know!"

"Jin's crazy, that's what you should know."

* * *

 

"Ok, so does everyone have the plan?" Jin asked.

"I can't believe we're doing this," muttered Takeda.

"Ooooh, we're doing this!" Jacqui said, staring hard at him. If Takeda had to guess, she was just as uncomfortable with it as he was, she was just trying to psych herself up. "I did not wait three hours after lights out in a supply closet for nothin'! Mmmmm-mm! No way!"

"Guys, plan?" Jin asked, always eager to do something illegal.

"First thing is me and Jacqui are gonna shoot out the cameras. She'll start cover fire, then I'll roll out and fire directly at it."

"After that I've got about a minute to pick open that keypad lock before the silent alarms sound. If it takes me longer, we run. What's the rendezvous point . . . Jacqui!" he asked, quizzing her like he was a teacher.

"The west perimeter of the refugees' tents."

"Right. Once I get the door open, then what, Takeda?"

"Thennnnn," he sighed tiredly, "we both go in and start searching for the file folder."

"Yup. If General Blade's in there-"

"We're fucked," Cassie articulately said.

Jin scoffed. "Well yes. But we're gonna _try_ to get away! If she's not in there and we've got the goods, we run, and I mean RUN. Alright. We all got the SI uniforms on, right? Then we won't be as easily identified." Two 'yeahs' and a huffed 'yup' answered him. "Alright. You guys ready?"

Cassie checked the clips in her guns. "Ready."

"Woah, hold on!" Jacqui whispered. "We're not gonna shoot anybody, are we?"

"Relax," Cassie chuckled. "They're rubber."

"Ready."

"Takeda?"

He sighed. "Ready."

"Cass, start on point. Takeda, bring up the rear. We take out who we have to, and as silently as possible. Let's go."

Cassie nodded, opening the door from their hiding place to the barracks hallway. She waited for the swivel of the North camera to the other hallway, then motioned Jin forward. He took two cautionary steps into the open, then retreated back into the safety of their room.

"What?"

"We need a decoy. I just thought of something: when I turn that South corner down there, there'll be another camera swiveling as well. If I park it and wait for you three, it's bound to see me. We need someone to go the other way. Draw attention."

" . . . "

"Well don't everyone volunteer at once!"

"We could use the vents?" Takeda offered, pointing to the grate in the corner of the room. It's cliché, but it'll probably work. Who expects clichés when they're so cliché?"

"Takeda, look at the size of that vent. If you and Jin think you two're getting your shoulders in there, you're ridiculous," said Cassie matter-of-factly.

"Uuuugh! This is so frustrating! I say we just abandon it!" he said. He scanned their faces and their minds, looking for any trace that anyone agreed with him.

" _But I want that folder-_ " came from Jin's direction.

" _I'm getting fed up. But what if that S & R was for my dad_?"

" _No way, we're already here! Maybe we should just make a break for it. I really wanna do this_."

Damn. So he was the only one. Fine. "Okay, so let's split off into two groups. Cass and Jin, me and Jacqui. One of us'll leave right now and run - me and Jacqui probably - so you and Jin can open the General's door. We'll be as loud as possible. S-" His breath hitched in his throat, and he swallowed thickly to clear it. "Set off alarms. Get as many people on our backs as possible." A brief image of fully armed SPEC OPS teams running after them, shooting at him and Jacqui. He banished it quickly, shutting it up tight behind a wall in his mind. "Umm . . . We'll be the distraction while Jin does his thing. Hopefully the camera man will track us and relay positions rather than watch for you two. Rendezvous here, unless me and Jacqui have people on our tail, in which case we'll lead them away. Or, unless we're captured. Jin, if you and Cassie get captured, then . . . "

Jin shrugged. "No talking my way out of that one. Good thing you paired the two of us up."

Takeda's stomach did a little flip inside of him. "Alright. Come on."

"Hold on. Lemme have one of your guns," Jacqui said, already sliding her gauntlets off her arms. "These are kind of identifying, yeah?"

"Yeah, good point," Cassie shrugged, slipping one of them from the holsters and slapping it into Jacqui's hand. "

Jacqui and Takeda crouched low around the corner, and he counted down behind his back.

' _Three_ ', his heart pounded harder in his throat. He quickly put a wall around his mind and blocked out everyone else's thoughts. If there were any more last-minute reservations from anyone, he didn't want to hear them.

' _Two_ ', he failed to steady a shaky breath, sucking it in and forgetting to release it.

' _One_ ,' last chance to turn back. He ignored his body's warnings, reminding himself that it was for Jacqui.

' _Go! Go! Go!_ '


	3. Chapter 3

' _Three._ ' Jacqui quickly tried to imagine how she would execute this. Just lean and shoot, lean and shoot. Nothing to it.

' _Two._ ' She thought that not acknowledging the dread would keep it away, but it crept up on her before she knew it - the fear balling in her stomach like a stone, along with the chest-tightening anxiety of getting caught. And then she heard Takeda's shaky breath. He was scared, too. He shook her confidence as much as his own.

' _One._ ' Damn it, she was losing faith in this mission fast. She couldn't do this, could she? Could she really help them break into General Blade's office? Her heart lurched up into her throat, and she knew if she didn't do this quickly, she'd never do it.

' _Go! Go! Go!_ ' Jacqui closed her eyes, allowing herself one last cleansing breath while Cassie kicked open the door. Suddenly, to surprise herself, she leaned around the doorframe. In her haste she nearly forgot to turn away from the camera, and with a gasp she shielded her face with her hand at the last second. ' _Crap, crap crap! We're dead, we're dead-_ ' She aimed and blindly shot as many rounds as possible in the camera's general direction before turning her face away.

_**BAMBAMBAM! BAM! BAM! BAMBAMBAMBAM!** _

A cold, shuddering chill stabbed into her neck and spread furiously down her spine like a poison. She held her cover fire, not even bothering to try and look composed. She just messed up, and messed up bad, and she knew it. Her eyes, wide with worry, locked with Takeda's over her shoulder, and the absolute alarm that she knew was coloring her brown eyes blanched all color in his face. His eyebrows furrowed, he gave her a longing look of pity before she saw the resolution return. His lips pursed; the coy, determined glint returned to his eyes to her relief.

Takeda surged forward. In the midst of the crossfire, he somersaulted into the hallway. Keeping his face turned away as well, he rose out of the roll and flicked his arm out to the side in one smooth motion. Despite herself Jacqui watched. His orange kunai sailed towards the camera, and upon impact exploded in a violent shower of fluorescent orange plasma and camera pieces.

They stayed there frozen, Takeda with his arm extended out and Jacqui staring wide-eyed at the wall. Too afraid to move while the gunfire's echo faded down the halls of the barracks. Not breathing. Not blinking. Frozen, except for her heart pounding out of her chest, pulsing in her stomach, her throat, her brain. Seconds stretched into minutes into hours. The weight of what they just did, of the consequences if they were caught, bore down on them even harder along with the deafening, thick silence.

Jacqui was too scared to even try and reach Takeda mentally. She already felt claustrophobic, she felt like the room was closing in, and that the soldiers were already arming themselves and running after them. She felt paranoid, like they already knew their location and her face and her name and her rank all because she looked at the stupid camera-

"No alarms?" Jin asked, the first to break the silence. Voice clipped and tight from tension.

" _Shh_!" Jacqui hissed, already listening for sounds of pursuers. "Stay there . . . " she warned, holding her palm out to the doorframe where Cassie and Jin were crowding.

"I guess we're good . . . Whoo! Alright!" Cassie yelled triumphantly, pumping her fist in the air. "Maybe you guys can help us, then-"

_BWWWRRRRRRRRT! BWWWRRRRRRRRT! BWWWRRRRRRRRT!_

"Oh, shit!" Cassie corrected herself. The alarm blasted overhead through the central systems like an explosion, filling every possible inch of every hallway. It resonated through, the high, trailing pitch at the end ringing loudly, vibrating uncomfortably in Jacqui's ears on each blare.

"Oh, my God," she breathed, "We're screwed! We're so screwed! I'm starting to regret this!" she yelled out. An announcement of their fear, of the obvious, of what she assumed to be the consensus.

"Guys, RUN!" Jin yelled.

The cry galvanized Takeda into action with a start. He looked around as if remembering where he was and how he got there, then ran back to Jin.

"What-?"

He reached over Jin and slipped two arrows from his quiver, inspecting the tips. Satisfied with whatever he saw, he turned away. "Let's go!" he yelled, grabbing Jacqui's arm and hauling her along, down the hallway. As they turned the corner and faced another camera Takeda threw down an arrow and a blue smoke screen exploded around them for cover. "Take out more cameras! Make as much noise as possible!" he yelled at her over the alarm.

* * *

 

_**BAM! BAMBAMBAMBAM! BAM! BAM! BAMBAM! BAMBAMBAMBAMBAM!** _

Had Sonya not fallen asleep at her desk, she probably would have reacted to the gunfire a little less violently. That's what she told herself, anyway.

Instead, the gunshots went off, exploding in her ears like they were right next to her. She flinched awake, cringing with the volume of each round, expecting any one to tear through her at any second. Her heart skipped beats in panic, adrenaline instantly started coursing through her. A startled shock stabbed into her neck and spread to all of her limbs, deadening them in instantaneous, gut-reacting terror. She shut her eyes tight, turning her chair away from the door and tucking her knees up to her chest for protection. Covering her head.

She wasn't sure how long she sat there. Or how long the gunfire went on. She forgot to count the rounds while she was still half-asleep. Each pang rattled her eardrums and her brain, scrambling her thoughts a bit each time. Waiting, waiting for one to hit her. It felt like forever. It felt like there was an hour between each shot, like each bullet was carefully deciding where it was going to go into her while she sat unprotected. And yet, none ever did hit her. Suddenly, like a warm, energizing, infuriating kick, training and rational thought forcibly shoved the paralysis form her limbs. She nimbly slid from her chair and dove under her desk for cover, pulling her gun from the holster to check the clip. Full.

Bullets weren't hitting the wall, and weren't hitting anywhere in the room around her. They weren't shooting at her, she realized. But by the time she made the realization there was one final explosion, stronger than the gunshots.

Then there was silence.

In the wake of the cacophony, of the riot she just woke up to, the silence was even more deafening. She didn't move, didn't breathe for fear of alerting whoever was out there. Her heart pumped furiously in her chest. Beads of sweat trickled down her forehead and neck. Her senses were on high alert - but there was nothing for them to pick up. It was like the noises startled even the person making them. Like they didn't want to move either in the wake of their feat.

She had to call this in, immediately. She had to warn everyone, get everyone on high alert. But the comm device was still on her desk. She couldn't move yet. She sat there for a few more minutes, straining for them to break, for the shooters to make the first move. To try and ambush her, or shoot at her, or something. Her legs itched to move, her hands shook despite how hard she was squeezing the gun.

Suddenly, her comm device lit up on her desk above her. "General Blade! A camera outside your office was just shot out by two intruders!" Sonya took that as her cue to clamor out from under her desk. She snatched it up.

"Sound the alarm!"

"Yes, ma'am!" Immediately, it started blaring above her and above the barracks.

Sonya threw the device down and grabbed the PA microphone, slamming her finger on the button. "This is General Blade! We've got two shooters in the officers' barracks! All units on high alert!" she yelled into it. Her own voice projected well above the alarm despite its volume, and she heard the tension in her tone. Silently cursing herself for losing her composure, she realized that she didn't give any actual orders. "All Fugitive Task Forces and MPs scatter and search the barracks! Use whatever force necessary to apprehend them!"

The camera man's voice barked from her desk. "I've got them on another camera! They just ran past your office, General!"

"Dammit!" She jumped up, hoping to catch them before they ran away. As she cocked her pistol and threw open the door, all she saw was the heel of a black Standard Issue SF boot turn the corner.

"I've got them in my sights! Wearing SF gear. I'm going after them. Keep relaying positions!"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Do we have identities?"

"Negative. They're throwing smoke screens."

Great. It was probably a ninja. Another Earthrealm faction war in the making. Brief images of the first between the Shaolin, Lin Kuei, SF, Shirai Ryu, and all the Dragon classifications entered her mind. Sabotages left and right, soldiers dead on all sides.

No way would that happen again on her watch. She'd find them.

She'd kill them if she had to.

* * *

 

"That was really smart of them to run towards mom's office," Cassie said, only loud enough to be heard over the screeching of the alarm. "I really only have to protect one side of the hallway. Cuz since they ran that way, nobody'd be running towards General Blade's office from that way."

"Hm," Jin grunted, focused on keeping watch for them in the little window in the door. "All we need is General Blade to chase them. You're sure she will? Our ten-minute confusion window is running out." As calm as he thought he was, the chances of their excursion almost working was both exciting him, and making him nervous. He kept grabbing Cassie's wrist and checking the countdown on her watch before she yelled at him and told him to make himself busy if he was getting antsy.

" _Tch_! Acting like I don't know my own mother. She'll chase them. Haven't you ever seen her go after Kano?. Once someone gets her their location she'll turn into a fuckin' bloodhound. Just wait."

"Good thing we picked a hide out close to her office, too. Okay, now shut up. I need to listen for her-"

Her door banged open around the corner, slamming back against the wall. "I've got them in my sights!" She was shouting. No way Jin wouldn't hear her. "Wearing SF gear. I'm going after them. Keep relaying positions!" Her footsteps pounded down the hallway, and as soon as Jin couldn't hear them anymore over the blaring of the alarm, he nodded to Cassie.

"You ready?"

"Yup!" she said, cocking her pistol with the cold fluidity of practice.

Oh thank the gods. He was ready to go. He checked the pouch on his belt for all his tools - the virus code Takeda gave him, a blacklight for fingerprints on the pad, a place-holder keycard, and his usual pins and picks for traditional locks. "Alright . . . " He grabbed the handle, praying Cassie couldn't see his hand shaking, and it was like another jolt to his heart. "If we're caught, it's been nice working with you, grunt."

"You too, loser."

"Let's go!" He threw open the door and instantly forgot to scope and check his surroundings. Two steps into the hallway he realized it, but it was too late to go back. "Shit," he muttered, making a beeline for the door. He used the blacklight first, and the keypad lit up with General Blade's thumbprint.

Cassie took the strategic approach, peering out both sides of the door to make sure the hallway was clear. Then she snuck her way over to Jin, standing guard over his back.

Ok, so he knew the number possibilities - 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9. How many of each were there? He quickly mashed the 1 down until it stopped at 12 slots. He was hoping to get it without the virus, but there was no way he would be able to try and guess it with over 300,000 possible combinations. He sighed, jamming the card into the door slot. "How's our time looking?"

"We've got three minutes."

"Damn it!"

"Not enough time? We can still abort-"

"It's fine." If the keypad was designed the way Takeda suspected, the door used to be a regularly locked door. So the handle, when turned, would pull the latch in and allow the door to open. With the keypad electronically connected to the door handle, it wouldn't let the handle turn unless someone enters the right code. If he held the latch down, the handle would still be locked by the keypad unless he enters the virus code. The virus code would temporarily disable the keypad, and render it a manually locked door. Which he had to pick in 10 seconds or less before the back-up systems rebooted and destroyed the virus. He decided to pick the manual lock first before the virus. That way, all he had to do was scrape the pick on the tension rod until all the pins set. He had a lesser chance of error if he moved slower.

He slid the card around until he found the latch and pushed it in, cramming of his larger tension rods in to hold it there. He could feel the paranoia overtaking him. The tensions rising. Raising his hackles and the hair on his arms and neck. He felt each second tick by, knowing it was a second closer to them getting caught. Well, technically they could be caught at any time. But this window of opportunity was their best chance of not getting caught. He felt like they were already coming. He was already too late. It was futile, and if they stayed there any longer, they would fail. And who knew what would happen if they got caught?

He kept trying to slip another smaller tension rod into the manual lock, but his shaking hands couldn't guide it gently into the keyhole. Precious seconds, wasted. Trial after trial after trial. It took him upwards of six times - he lost count after six. His senses sharpened, hyperaware of every noise, every breath, every distant shout. He felt like people were creeping up on him, were breathing down his neck-

"Cass, could you back off? You're supposed to be watching my back."

"Oh, right. Sorry. One minute, twenty seconds."

"Shit, shit, shit!" After a few more tries he finally managed to shove the rod into the keyhole and started working on the picks.

"30 seconds, Jin!"

"I'm trying!" Damn it! Why was he shaking so badly?

"Jin, let's go! This is taking too long! How do we know the camera man hasn't turned his sights to us?"

"Shut up, Cage."

"Time's up. Come on!"

"No! I can do this . . . " His tongue protruded from his mouth, the testament to how devoted he was to his task.

* * *

 

"Do you still have eyes on the suspects?"

"Yes, General."

"I lost them. Relay their positions to the MP's and FTF's instead. Reroute the live video feed to my comm device so I can watch."

"Yes, ma'am."

As soon as it was available on her comm she watched the video, mildly annoyed by how fast the camera angles switched, and that it was always on their backs. One of them was definitely a woman, the other unmistakably male. She spoke again to the camera man, "Put me a few hallways ahead. I gotta see these punks' faces."

"Yes, ma'am."

The picture changed again to a quiet hallway, and she glued her eyes to the spot where they would emerge around the corner. As soon as they did she tapped the screen and paused it. "There. Zoom in on them!"

It was blurry, but she instantly recognized both of them. Her heart sank, and her panic collapsed in on itself like a poorly baked cake, replaced by indignation. All this for those two?

"You gotta be kidding me," she breathed. "Send out a mass order: I want _non-lethal_ _force_ used to apprehend the two suspects. I repeat: _non-lethal force_. Do you understand me? If they refuse to comply, taser them, tranquilize them, do whatever you have to do, just make it non-lethal!"

"Yes, ma'am." Seconds later, his voice echoed over the alarm, repeating Sonya's message. While he spoke her order verbatim, she scrolled through the other cameras' feeds. "If Takeda and Jacqui are there, where're . . . "

She found who she was looking for. Breaking into her office! She connected all the pieces in her head - they wanted Kenshi and Jax's stupid mission folder! Takeda and Jacqui were the distraction.

"Son of a bitch!"

* * *

 

Non-lethal force.

As horrible as those words were, compared to the bullet-dodging Takeda and Jacqui had been doing, they were like an oasis in the desert.

The two of them were supposed to ditch the fatigues and make it look like they were responding to the crisis. They were supposed to protect themselves as the distractions. But everywhere they turned there was someone else chasing them, adding to the pack on their tails. Sonya set the entire barracks after them. For a stupid camera.

Jacqui said she regretted it earlier. Takeda was loathing it.

Every slip, every hiccup that didn't go according to plan was another open door for screw-ups. And the slightest was their downfall. Like right now.

He and Jacqui got lucky when they ditched Sonya. Now, it'd take another miracle for them to get out of this mess. Six fully armed MPs surrounding them. All out of options. He was exhausted and scared. They were trapped. His legs felt like jelly from all the running and he couldn't catch his breath. But his pride, and the fact that all four of them committed to this, wouldn't allow him to surrender. Not yet. He couldn't face what he knew Sonya would do to him when they took him and Jacqui in. He had to give Cass and Jin time to do what they had to.

When the soldiers poured from the other side of the refugees' camp and cut them off near the center, he immediately put his fists up. He was ready to go down swinging. He slid his whips from his sleeves and flicked them threateningly, once in front then crossing them and scraping them on the ground. The soldiers stopped a safe distance away and raised their guns, three lasers dotting his and Jacqui's chest each.

Oh god, they wouldn't really shoot them, would they? He purposefully and consciously flared his eyes, translating every challenge into his gaze. He hoped it overshadowed the fear. "Better put those guns away," he warned, swallowing thickly. "Non-lethal force, remember?"

* * *

 

They didn't even notice her. Both too wrapped up in the door to her office. Good. She was gonna scare them.

"Okay. Now for the virus code," Jin said, touching the keypad to bring it back to life. Wow, thought Sonya. They actually came really close to pulling this off! He was about to punch the code in off the paper Takeda gave him when General Blade decided to make herself known. "Atten-hut!" she yelled.

Just as she wanted, Cassie gasped and spun around, actually dropping her gun she was so scared. Her eyes widened, and the look of pure dread she shot General Blade made her feel oddly empowered. An excuse already poured from her mouth. "Mom-"

"Detail!" Sonya snarled, folding her hands behind her back to look more authoritative. Cassie immediately snapped to. She locked her thumbs and folded her hands right-over-left, placing them in the small of her back. She planted her left leg at shoulder width, head down at an angle. But Jin took his good time turning around and facing General Blade. When he looked at Sonya it was one of controlled, calculated arrogance to hide his fear. He looked down his nose at her, frowning as if he had the right to be disappointed.

She decided to give him 30 seconds to fix his attitude and save himself before she tore him a new one. "You too, cupcake," she said, purposefully endearing.

He opened his mouth to argue, but Cassie broke formation to shake her head at him. He sneered, lifting his eyebrow arrogantly, before loosely mimicking Cassie's position.

"Trespassing, insubordination, disrespecting a superior officer, treason, and mutiny for classified mission information? You just couldn't let it go, could you?" She left it open-ended on purpose, to see whether Cassie would take it as rhetorical or attempt to explain herself. For once, Cassie held her tongue. "You want a promotion, but you're reckless. Impatient, short-tempered, stubborn, arrogant, and defiant. Don't even get me started on you, Jin."

"Whatever, General. Like I haven't heard it before-"

"You better shut your mouth. Cage, you and Specialist Briggs are facing dishonorable discharge, at the minimum. And god, between the two of you at least SOMEONE should've watched the rear!"

Jin rolled his eyes like a child. "Gimme a break. We just wanna know where Kenshi and Jax are. That's it."

"That's classified. Restricted. Confidential. Private. Secret. I know the first word didn't work for you, so take four more."

"Why?"

"Because. I. say. so. High level missions require high level security clearances, which you don't have. You better not question it, Jin."

"What are you gonna do? I'm not military."

"Are you challenging me?"

"Well I'm certainly not clinging to every word you're saying. Jacqui and Takeda want to know! They're worried about their fathers, for Raiden's sake! I want to know! They met up with Lao and Liu Kang. You can't even tell us where? They haven't called in. Don't you think that's a little suspicious?"

"I don't need you to tell me how to do my job, Kung Jin!"

"Then maybe you should do it _right_ , ma'am!"

She was too shocked and insulted to think of a verbal come back right away. She regressed instantly to her default, drawing her fist back on impulse, ready to discipline a disrespectful soldier. Jin didn't even flinch, which both mildly impressed her and infuriated her. Luckily, her comm device sputtered to life and saved Kung Jin's. "General, we've captured the two suspects. Chujin Takeda Takahashi and Specialist Jacqueline Briggs. We had to taser him."

"Excellent work. I want them fully restrained, in individual holding cells. Do whatever you have to do to block Takeda's powers."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Send a fully-armed MP team to my location now to subdue the other two suspects."

"Yes, ma'am."

"If you think I'm going quietly, you're wrong," Jin warned, narrowing his eyes at her.

Oh, yeah, so Jin was gonna take down 6 or 7 MPs? General Blade leveled her own eyes back at him and simply lifted her eyebrow, pursing her lips. "Okay, Jin."


	4. Chapter 4

Takeda had no idea when he regained consciousness. At some point he simply started thinking. Thinking about his history of injuries. Punched. Kicked. Stabbed, slashed, scratched, shot, slammed to the ground, acid spit in his eyes, burned, bit, shocked - and shocked by Raiden, no less.

Never tasered.

And he hoped he'd never be tasered again.

Whatever electricity Raiden carried in his body was nothing in comparison. Getting tasered was a different kind of voltage. More . . . concentrated. More incapacitating. The moment the probes stuck into his side, right under his armpit, he stiffened. His whole body tensed uncontrollably, rigid as some 50,000 volts entered him. Each charge leapt from nerve-ending to nerve-ending, like thousands of pins and needles. With each leap the muscles attached to them forcibly bulged and contracted, shrank and twitched. He dropped like a rock. Luckily, Jacqui had the presence of mind to catch him before he literally face-planted into the ground.

She barely guided him to the ground before the MPs charged them. She surrendered immediately. Good, he thought, he wouldn't have wanted her tasered too. It was singularly the oddest experience he ever had. He wasn't sure when he ended up unconscious after that, either. All he remembered was his body buzzing then nothing. Someone probably warned them about his powers and they took care of it. He scoffed inwardly. It wasn't like he would have _used_ it, not after he was caught fair and square. Not on allied soldiers.

Oh, right. The MPs captured him. It dawned on him that he was caught, but he didn't want to open his eyes yet - he was too afraid of seeing where they took him. What they were going to do to him. He lifted his head and his ears brushed against his arms. He figured his hands were tied over his head. His shoulders were stiff and starting to go numb; he couldn't feel his arms or hands. At all. All his dead weight pulled on his shoulders while he was unconscious. And his neck was sore from hanging. He had a bag or some sort of blindfold over his head. Every time he sucked in a breath he panted warm, recycled air back into his lungs. He felt suffocated. Uncomfortable.

"I'll let interrogation have their way with you," Sonya said. He knew she was serious but he didn't think . . . what did he have to confess to?

" _Let's see, Takeda: you . . . mentally attacked General Blade, destroyed military property, ran from the crime scene, attacked MPs - until you got tasered, anyway - what else_?" That stuff alone was enough to garner some kind of punishment from General Blade. " _You earned it, buddy,_ " he thought.

His eyebrows furrowed, and he felt something thick and gummy on his temples tug uncomfortably at his skin. What were they, electrodes? Oh God, she wouldn't electrocute him, would she? " _No way, Takeda, no way . . . think about something else_!"

To distract himself, he turned his attention to his feet. His legs were stuck in a half-extended position behind him, toes dragging on the ground, but without his upper body he couldn't roll back onto his heels and stand up.

"Damn it, Jin, why'd you make us do this?"

The door slammed open behind him, and Takeda jumped. Whoever it was pounded into his room, and he tried to pick up on the number of minds. As soon as he sent out a wave the thing around his temples hummed threateningly. He retreated, but not before it delivered a shock straight to his temples, scrambling his thoughts like eggs. He writhed, thrashing against the ropes. Accidentally swinging himself around. "Agh! What the-"

"Yeah, your telepathy should be blocked by that." He recognized General Blade's voice immediately.

"What is it?" he asked, relying on his ears to find where she was in the room. He briefly realized that that was how Kenshi navigated when he didn't have Sento.

She padded up behind him, grabbing his shoulders to stop him, and he tensed. She was going to hit him. And it was going to hurt.

"I'll ask the questions," she said, directly in his ear. Her hot breath trickled down his neck and he shuddered despite himself. "What were you and Jacqueline Briggs doing destroying the cameras surrounding my office?"

Who all did she interrogate already? How much did she already know? That was a pretty odd question to start with. 'I have to be smart about this,' he thought.

"Not answering?"

"Wait . . . "

"I know you're a tough kid, Takeda. Smart, too. I know you're going to try to think your way out of this. But I want you to know that I'm tougher. Smarter." Her voice trailed along behind him as she continued. "By a loooong shot. You know my officer training involved me killing Oni." The leather of her gloves suddenly crinkled in his ear startling him. He flinched, thinking it was going to be a weapon. "With my bare hands," she hissed.

" . . . That sounds disgusting," he said carefully. "Look, I'm technically not under your jurisdiction, so are you even allowed to hold me like this? Have you called Master Hasashi?-"

The footsteps trailed to his side and he heard a _snick_. General Blade crouched down and swung something at his legs. A metal rod cracked against the side of his knee, and drilling pain split across his kneecap and circled around it. A cry of surprise and panic tore itself from his throat, and he bit his lip, trying to breathe through the throbbing as it faded into a swollen numbness.

"Don't give me that Kung Jin line of shit!" she yelled. "And don't speak unless you're answering a question, understood?"

"Y-yes, Ma'am."

"What were you doing outside my office?" He heard her voice circle around to the front of him.

"L-looking for Jax's mission folder!" Wasn't it obvious?

"No shit! I mean what were you _doing_? What was your part in it?"

"J - I was supposed to be the distraction." He didn't want to incriminate Jacqui if he didn't have to, either.

"You mean you took out the cameras so we'd chase you?"

"Me and not Cass or Jin."

"Why did the four of you want the mission folder?"

"I feel like you should know-"

She slapped the rod into her palm and he froze. Then the rod slammed into his jaw, the sound thunking in his entire head. His teeth gnashed together and his head snapped to the side. Almost immediately his eyes blurred. His head lolled, his whole face and teeth went numb, his jaw hung open loosely as a wave of nausea crashed into him. Followed by throbbing pain. Nausea. Pain and nausea. "Oww," he moaned. Good thing his legs weren't holding him up anyway. He was sure they would've buckled by now. His temples started to throb, and he tossed his head back to blink hard at the ceiling. Try to regain some of his faculties.

"Why did the four of you want the mission folder?!"

He waited, frozen, until the dizziness passed. "Did you give Jacqui the same treatment?!" he cried as soon as he could trust his jaw. It felt stiff, like he couldn't close it. Hoped it wasn't dislocated or fractured. " _No, no! Question, Takeda. Don't get it again!_ Why? General, you sent an all-star recon team - my dad, Jacqui's dad, Kung Lao, Liu Kang, Master Hasashi, who else?"

" . . . "

"Right. Never mind. Don't answer that. You sent a team like that on a classified mission. About a week ago, right? Jacqui's dad is a notoriously frequent caller. Like, every few _days_ caller. If some stuff goes down it's more like every few hours caller. The man hasn't called. Not once. We knew something was up then."

"What if I told them not to call?"

"Come on, General," he scoffed. He couldn't see her face, but the shape of her behind the blindfold squared its shoulders to him. He quickly remedied, "If you sent them on a mission, you'd obviously want them to report in! Why would you wait blindly for them to either return or be killed?" He waited for her reply, but she didn't say anything. His shoulders were uncomfortably cold. And tingly. He shifted, tugging at the ropes around his wrists until they groaned in protest. Hoping she may take a little pity on him.

"Go on," she prompted.

"Look, can you at least let me down? I can't feel my arms."

"Go on," she said again. Was this even real? What was going on?

"My dad didn't call either. Neither did Master Hasashi. So we ruled out Jax's comm device breaking."

"It didn't occur to you that they went somewhere comm devices don't work?"

"It did, we just . . . "

"Too goddamn impatient to _wait_."

"Please, Ma'am. Jacqui just got a little scared, is all. So did I."

"This doesn't downplay what you did. Still, I guess I can't blame you." She tugged the blindfold off his head, and the light assaulted his eyes. He blinked heavily, taking stock of his surroundings. Grey walls, grey cement floors with a drain directly underneath him, probably for blood. Working the clicking sound out of his jaw, he craned his neck as far up as he could look and saw the thick ropes criss-crossed around each wrist four or five times before trailing up around a hook suspended from the ceiling.

Next to General Blade was a table, with all manner of sharp objects on it. "Geez, General," he started, swallowing thickly. He hoped she didn't hear his voice shake. He hoped she didn't catch his wrists tense in the ropes. He hoped she didn't notice the way his heart pulsed out of his ribcage. The bead of sweat roll down his neck. "What, you have Kano in here before me or something? Oh my god, she's gonna kill me."

Wait. Was she? Would she really kill him? What did she even want out of him? What was she asking him that she didn't already know? He quickly took stock of all the information: she knew that him, Jacqui, Cassie, and Jin asked her about Jax's and Kenshi's mission. She knew him and Jacqui were the ones to take out the cameras - she asked him for confirmation in her first question. General Blade wasn't stupid - she was smart enough to know that they were looking for the mission folder, with or without asking him. What else?

In Takeda's mind she had all the pieces, and she had all the pieces connected. So why? She would risk killing a Chujin of the Shirai Ryu clan in an unneeded interrogation? That wouldn't be the wisest career move, considering it would look like cold blood. She'd have Master Hasashi and the whole clan on her and the SF within days. And Kenshi. Did she really want Takahashi Kenshi after her? The greatest swordsman in the world?

She would risk losing Takeda's skill, his telepathy, and Cassie's teammate? Why the heck was he tied up, beaten, intimidated, for a confession that was of no consequence to either of them anyway? The thoughts steeled him.

Maybe he missed something. Maybe she knew something he didn't and thought he'd be able to explain it. He wanted to find out. In his newfound empowerment he glared straight at her and suddenly threw everything he had into a mental attack. He wanted to burrow through her mental walls if she had them up before the thing around his head shocked him. The moment she felt his power touch her mind she glared back at him. Just what he wanted. Their eyes connected and he reversed, opening up his mind. He pulled at her mind instead, wrapping his influence around her, inviting her in and enticing her eyes to his. He made his power visible in his eyes. His very pupils glowed blue, he made them like bottomless pools of infinity. He locked her in his gaze, holding her still.

She froze. Her eyes widened and her mouth hung open in uncharacteristic paralysis. He attacked her senses next, breaking their connection as he shut down her eyes and ears.

Despite her barriers the force and strength of his attack worked and dizzied her. She staggered back, and in her confusion let down her defenses. He slipped through the cracks like water through rocks and scanned her mind.

A barrage of images and voices flooded into his mind, so quickly he couldn't sort through them. From her point of view, and from all different times and memories. He bent over a bleeding Johnny Cage in Quan Chi's fortress. He heard Raiden calling her name. He heard a little girl screaming, "Mommy! Mommy!" He felt someone pin something to her uniform. He choked Kano, feeling his jugular pulse beneath her thumbs. By the time he found the thought streams he was looking for, the ones associated with their heist, the electrodes around his temples hummed again. It emitted a high-pitched whine that grew higher and higher until it delivered the shock. His whole neck and face tensed up, paralyzing the scream in his vocal chords. He swore his eyes actually crossed, every process going on in his head was interrupted. His mind went dead, momentarily disconnected from his body.

He accidentally transmitted his pain to General Blade. Her hands flew to her head and she screamed out, collapsing to the ground.

General Blade lay there until her sight and hearing returned, blinking dizzily, reorienting her equilibrium in the brightness. Takeda shook his head, regaining control of his mental faculties first.

"What the hell am I even DOING here?!" he yelled. "You're not gonna kill me, General Blade!" He pulled at the ropes again, toes uselessly kicking at the ground in the only form of protest he could muster. "And you already know everything you're asking me about! What, are you just trying to scare me? Is that it?"

"OF COURSE I'M TRYING TO SCARE YOU, YOU IDIOT!" she screamed back. Her confession surprised him. He didn't expect her to explain herself at all.

"What?"

"If this were a real interrogation you'd be DEAD already!"

"Why-?"

"Because you don't destroy MY property, start a false alarm like that, put MY life in danger, mess with MY soldiers, MY MPs, MY FTFs, ME! And just get away with it! You will NEVER pull a stunt like that with SF again. Is that clear? I don't care WHO you are, I don't care WHAT you can do! I don't care what FACTION you're in! Do you understand me? Now grow up! You owe me like 4,000 dollars for all the shit you destroyed!" She peeled herself from the floor, roughly massaging her temples. "Geez, that was weird."

"Yeah? Not as weird as being hit with a metal rod. My jaw hurts. And my knee."

"Well boo-hoo!" she sneered. "I have a job for you."

"A what?" He felt the subject turning away from him, but he was still stuck on it.

"A mission! A job! I have a mission for you and the rest of Cassie's team."

"Wait . . . a mission?"

"Yes, Takeda, God! A mission!"

Oh. _Oh_. Was she . . . asking a favor of him? "A mission? You're gonna send me on a _mission_? After you just put me through all that?"

"Takeda, please-"

"Wow, General! A mission! I wonder what it could possibly be! I am just so excited to do you this favor after you just scared the SHIT out of me! You know, I'm half-tempted to decline at this point! I'm Shirai Ryu. Hanzo Hasashi is my master, not you! I take orders from you because I want to, not because I owe you anything-"

"It's about Kenshi and Jax!"


	5. Chapter 5

"My dad?" Takeda wanted relief to rush through him but it simply refused to blossom. He searched desperately within his heart to find it. He wanted her to say that everything was fine, that Kenshi was safe, and that she only hid the information from them for the sake of formality. Given the circumstances, the only thing she called up in his heart was fear.

"Yeah," General Blade affirmed flatly.

"What kinda mission do you want? Combat Support? Extraction?" S & R? Body retrieval? "He's not . . . he's not dead, is he?" His heart nose-dived into his stomach as soon as he said it. " _Oh my god, he's probably dead_ ," shot across his mind like a bullet, and his thoughts went into a frenzy. He started picturing horrific and gory scenes of his father in varying degrees of 'dead'. Eviscerated. Bleeding out. Throat slashed open. Choked out. Face locked open in a scream forever silent. Dread pressed down on his shoulders like weights. "No, no, no! Oh my god, a-are you sure? There's no body, right? _Right_?" he babbled. "He could still be alive, General-"

"Takeda!" He paused, waiting for her confirmation. Waited. Stared into her eyes. Waited. His stomach crushed his heart like a fist and twisted, dripping a cold numbness through his whole body. She was taking too long. Too long, too long - she didn't want to tell him. That was it. It was over. Kenshi was dead. Hooking her thumbs into her belt loops, she shifted her weight. "We don't know," she finally admonished.

" . . . You don't know," he repeated. "What the heck does that mean? Is he dead, or isn't he?!"

"It means we lost contact with him. And we don't know if he's dead or alive."

Unsatisfactory. Unacceptable. He wanted a yes, or a no. Why couldn't she tell him? "And what about Hanzo? Didn't you send him too?" Hanzo was his father as much as Kenshi. "Please tell me Hanzo's safe at least."

"We don't know that either."

His heart started to ache at the thought of Master Hasashi being cut away from his life forever. He wanted to scream, he wanted to cry, but none of it seemed appropriate enough to do his pain justice. All he managed was a clenched-jawed, "No . . . " Jacqui was his next thought. He imagined a wet scream, pictured her sobbing uncontrollably. "And Jax? Is Jax alright? What about Kung Lao? You mean to tell me you don't know if Liu Kang, the Grand Champion of Mortal Kombat, is dead or not? You don't know if MY FATHER is dead or not?"

"I'm sorry, Takeda! But I don't have any answers!" She walked around behind him, and he heard her knife snick free of its case. General Blade sawed through the ropes around his wrists in a few easy strokes and he plummeted to the ground, landing in a heap. He rolled his shoulders, massaging the huge knot that bulged near his neck. She continued, "If it's any consolation, I don't think they're dead. M.I.A. would be more appropriate. You wanted details about Jax and Kenshi's mission. Well, here they are: about a week and a half ago I sent Jax and Kenshi on a reconnaissance mission to a deep, uncharted part of the Netherrealm. I mean a _deep_ part of the Netherrealm."

"Uncharted?" he snarled bitterly. "I thought Raiden and Hanzo helped you map out the whole realm a few months ago after Shinnok's return."

"They did. But they missed a spot. Hanzo probably never knew it existed, and knowing what I know now, I suspect Raiden missed it on purpose."

"Why?" Kenshi and Master Hasashi were lost in such a place? A place Raiden didn't even dare go?

General Blade shifted her hands as if cupping an invisible globe. "It's like a pocket on the farthest corner of the map. Dead zone. Like, _completely_ dead. No life, communication, power, no nothing. Even our drones malfunction and crash. I tried several times to get teams out there, but every squad I sent never came back."

"And you sent my DAD there?" he yelled. "Why? Didn't throw enough red flags for you, or something?" A rage bubbled in his heart to replace his unease. "'Oh! Gee! This place is really dangerous and everyone I send there DIES so why don't I just keep throwing people out there until, hey! MAYBE someone will come back!' That sounds logical!"

"Go ahead and criticize me!" she spat, crossing her arms. "I take my job very seriously, alright? I have to weigh every situation, and every option available to me, and every consequence of every option. And I'm gonna send the people best suited for each option and consequence. That includes Kenshi and Jax. And you know what?" she continued, jabbing her finger in his direction. "If there's even a speck on the ground in the Netherrealm that can reach Earthrealm, I wanna know about it! Okay?" She sighed tiredly, rubbing her face. "Why am I even explaining myself?" she grumbled. "Look, I sent Kenshi and Jax because I wanted people stronger than the average team. People who I could depend on, you know? People smart enough to watch their own backs despite our lack of communication. They were only supposed to go and scope the place out. Make maps, record enemy data, the works. Low-intensity conflict, if any. They were the best we had-"

"Don't say 'were'. Don't say it yet!" he snapped.

"They _are_ the best we have. They geared up and left immediately. And just as we suspected, I lost contact. I was prepared for it. I just trusted them enough to know what they were doing without the communication. I waited a few days, on alert about Jax's calling habits, like you said, then called Master Hasashi. Nobody knows the Netherrealm like he does. He was willing to go look. Lost contact with him. I don't even know if he made it to them. I talked to Raiden next, and he recruited Liu Kang and Kung Lao. The three of them left about two days ago."

"Raiden has no power in the Netherrealm. Why'd you call Raiden?"

"Just to alert him of the situation. And tell him there was a spot he missed. He said he'd look into it. I lost contact with them. As a last resort, I called the Lin Kuei and Grandmaster Sub-Zero. Lost contact."

"And so you want the last guinea pigs you have to go in there," he offered sarcastically. "We're your last resorts." General Blade nodded quickly.

"That's exactly what I want."

"So you can lose contact with us, too? Fill out another M.I.A. report? I can't believe you're okay with sending Cassie somewhere like this!"

General Blade leveled a tired glare in his direction on the floor, but chose to ignore his comment. "I wouldn't call you guys a last resort. More like . . . I was going to have a regular old S & R team do this, but I can't keep wasting soldiers when I have a team more than capable of this."

Takeda snorted. "You said you already sent 'the best you have.' What makes you think-"

"You guys took out Shinnok, didn't you?"

"Well, yes, but-"

"You and Jacqui fought off four revenants, didn't you? While wounded."

"Five! Wait - this is different-"

"I don't see how. It's a mission, that's it."

"You're asking us to go somewhere where you know we'll have no contact and search for our own parents who may or may not be dead! It's very different, General!"

"And Cass had to deal, knowing her father was Shinnok's prisoner! I'm not totally apathetic to your concerns!"

"You're being a little apathetic."

"I know what I'm asking of you. I know the emotional impacts. But you guys are strong, and you're all I have now that everyone else has been sent. There's no way any normal team can do this. I know it's tough. But I need you."

Takeda sighed. Of course he'd accept. He knew he'd accept the mission before he argued with her. He just wanted to know how high she thought the stakes were.

"Pretty high," he muttered under his breath.

"Huh?"

"How could I refuse?" he said, throwing his hands out. "This is my dad we're talking about - both of them. Hanzo, too. No way am I going to just abandon them or anyone else to their deaths when there's a chance I could help."

General Blade nodded. "Thanks, Takeda. I already unofficially debriefed Cass, Jin, and Jacqui, but we need to do a formal session, and then I need to file your mission into the computer. After that, all you guys have to do is gear up and leave whenever you're ready. I'm not giving you a time frame for this."

"Okay." General Blade stared at him a second longer than he would have liked before turning to leave. "How are we supposed to get there if we can't teleport?" Takeda asked.

General Blade paused. "You ever meet Fujin?"

"Fujin? No."

"Another god. God of the wind. Gonna take you there when you're ready. Come with me."

Takeda hopped up, angrily rubbing away the twinge in his knee. As General Blade turned back once more he glared at her.

"Don't give me that look," she said, casually tossing her braid over her shoulder. "I didn't give you anything you didn't deserve." She started walking, the usual purpose back in her steps. "You guys are really smart, the four of you. How much time did you take to plan your little operation?"

"Uuuum, if you count our waiting time, about 3 hours."

"Impressive!" she said, nodding her approval. "Really!"

"Heh! Oh, so now you approve?" Takeda asked.

"I don't ever approve of breaking the chain of command. But on the plus side, you reinforced why we put your team together. The four of you in tandem could be unstoppable. You know, Jin was this close to getting my door open." She held up her thumb and pointer finger with a small amount of space between them. "If I woulda been two more minutes late he woulda had it. Punk ass kids," she muttered as she strutted down the hall. Though, if Takeda was honest he swore he heard a smile in her tone. "I'm not sorry I punished you, with what little it was."

"Didn't think you were," he assured her.

"I would've thought Master Hasashi'd be twice as bad as that."

"Hanzo was fair with me," Takeda said. "He kicked my ass when I needed it." He sighed, "Can't believe he's lost."

"You will find him. I know you will." General Blade was only trying to be encouraging, Takeda knew, but her words just weren't doing it for him. There was something wrong with this whole mission. There was something wrong with Hanzo, Kenshi, Jax, Kung Lao, Liu Kang, Sub-Zero, and Raiden all not rescuing each other. He was afraid they were lost forever.

He was scared of whatever place could swallow them up like that.

He was afraid of being swallowed up himself.

And what about Jacqui? What would she do if Jax was gone?

He didn't want to think about it anymore - scratch that, he didn't want to _think_ anymore. He let General Blade lead him through the barracks' maze until they ended up outside. As soon as the door opened his hair and headband tails whipped around in a rogue wind. Warm and strong, but odd. Like it could toss them around if it wanted to, but was restraining itself, if that was at all possible. With gods in the mix, Takeda decided not to question it. He turned away from it, blinking away the tears that burned his eyes, but General Blade didn't seem at all bothered by it. She maintained her stride and led him to the mission tent.

Takeda ducked under the wildly flapping tent behind her, and met eyes with all three of his team. "Heeeey! You're alive!" Cassie yelled.

"Well! Nice to see you guys again!" He went and stood next to Jacqui. "You alright? General Blade didn't hurt you, did she?"

"Hm!" she shrugged. "One or two swings. I'm alright. Was expecting a lot worse, to be honest."

"And you would've gotten it, if I didn't need you right away," General Blade said, punching a few keys on the computer's control panel.

"I know, Aunt Sonya," Jacqui said, shaking her head.

"Ouch," Jin muttered. "Nice to know where we stand on your ladder of concern."

"You okay, Takeda? Did she hit your jaw?" Jacqui reached up and rubbed her hand along a tender spot on his face - he guessed it bruised. Momentary pain flared through his whole face down to his chin and he jerked away.

"Yeah. But I'm good."

They sat in silence while General Blade typed away on the computer. Entering names, coordinates, various data. In the meantime, Takeda reached out to Jacqui, sending her a thought. " _She tell you what's going on_?"

Jacqui looked up at him and nodded. " _Said that your dad and my dad are lost. And everyone else she sent to go rescue them hasn't come back either_."

" _I got the same thing. You think that's the whole truth_?"

Jacqui nodded again. " _If she's sending us on the mission she's got nothing to lie about._ "

" _True_ ," he agreed. " _Still, something doesn't sit right with me. We need a god to get us there, but Raiden can't get back? Also, what kind of place is it that Jax, my dad, Master Hasashi, all of them need rescuing?_ "

" _Yeah . . ._ " She trailed off, and Takeda grew afraid that he scared her. He reached down and grabbed her hand, lacing his fingers in hers.

" _I don't mean to scare you,_ " he said, gently stroking her hand with his thumb. " _I'm sure everything's fine, and it's just some malfunctions in tech. And it's just some fluke of the Netherrealm for Raiden._ "

" _Yeah,_ " Jacqui agreed. She squeezed his hand. " _I'm sure they're fine, too._ "

". . . Okay!" General Blade said, gently slapping her palms on the table. She turned around and faced the four of them. "Database has been updated."

The words left her mouth, then the energy in the tent shifted around Takeda - he felt the air and pressure in the room drop to the floor and gather in a single spot in the tent. His limbs felt heavy, the change made him a bit light-headed, but he followed the energy's path as it swirled in a circle on the floor. Around and around, over and over, rising up into a tornado. The dust and particles gathered, making the whirlwind cloudy before dissipating. The wind died, everything quieted down, and in the tornado's place was a man.

Tall, definitely godlike in how he carried himself. Back ram-rod straight, shoulders back, chin up. And with the inexplicable white aura around him that made him taller, prouder than regular humans. White hair that gave him a timeless wisdom, but in a young man's face. Long, gathered in a braid behind his head, headband of circlets around his forehead. Striking white eyes to match. They had a life of their own, the pure color swirling in and around itself like a tornado was already in there, it was just waiting to be unleashed. Definitely like Raiden's blue, only, if you asked Takeda, the white looked more powerful. More intimidating, more deep, more everything. Brown leather vest, engraved with a scale-like pattern, matching straps around his biceps and brown leather gauntlets. Black pants and brown leather greaves.

"Everyone, meet Fujin." General Blade squared her shoulders to him, covering her fist with her other hand. She bowed, telling him, "Thank you for coming."

"Of course," he nodded, glancing at Cassie's team. "Raiden has told me much about you," he said. "I am Fujin, god of the wind."

"Nice to meet you. Aren't you supposed to be green or something?" Jin asked. Ever tactful. Takeda's shock spread across his whole spine like ice. "I mean, I'm Chinese, not Japanese. But I thought in the Shinto religion you were like a lizard thing-"

"Jin!" Takeda yelled. "Shut up!" Don't get on the god's bad side, don't get on the god's bad side, don't get-

"I prefer this form," Fujin said without missing a beat. "My true form is not . . . conducive to speaking to humans."

Jin's mouth opened, and Takeda prayed that nothing stupid came out of it.

"Can't imagine why-"

"Anyway!" Takeda yelled, desperate to change the subject. "How about that debriefing, General?"

"Yes, and tell me about Raiden," Fujin said. He stared at Jin a second longer than he had to, but Takeda couldn't figure out what it meant. "I share your concerns about his disappearance," he admitted, white eyes squinting at the thought of it. "I would go and look for him myself, but like Raiden, my powers are naught in the Netherrealm. I was more than elated when you told me you had put this team together."

"Yes," she nodded. "I wanted you here for their debriefing so you know all the details, too. After Raiden and Hanzo Hasashi helped us map out the Netherrealm, I found a spot they both missed. I found it on accident, really. I sent a drone out on patrol and it crashed once it hit that pocket. I sent three more out on three separate occasions and they all crashed, too. I sent Jax and Kenshi first, then Hanzo to go find them. Then Raiden to go find him, who took Liu Kang and Kung Lao along. Then Sub-Zero to go find them. It's kind of a mess."

Fujin nodded. "And you have not heard from him since?"

"No. Not from any of them. So now we get to the good stuff. Their mission. Typical Seven Level debriefing, alright guys? I'll go through each, starting with mission and purpose. Your mission is ultimately an S & R. Good ol' Search and Rescue. You're gonna investigate the region of the Netherrealm where I sent Raiden, Hanzo, Sub-Zero, Liu Kang, Kung Lao, Jax, and Kenshi - and where I lost contact with them. You are to search the area, locate them, evaluate their status, and whether they are in danger or not, you are to return them home safely. Your secondary purpose will be to gather any and all information you can on this uncharted region.

"Context and environment, it's operational. Potentially hostile environment, so suit up for the worst, understand?" She received solemn nods from the four of them while Fujin crossed his arms. "Your location and time is the geo-spatial and spiritual plane of the Netherrealm. Coordinates are Underground South, negative 49 degrees, 28.996 minutes. Underground West, 119 degrees, 36.441 minutes. The name of your area is unknown, so we designated it 'Area X'. I don't know the terrain. I don't know if there are mountains, marshlands, plains, but we're assuming that because the areas around it are the same arid deserts you find in the Netherrealm, prepare for that climate and environment. Time: you have as much time as you want to get ready for this mission, but from the moment you deploy you will have a week to report in before you go M.I.A., and a week after that before we assume you are K.I.A. I'm sorry, but as I told all of you already, we just don't have the manpower to send another team after you. If you can't do it, nobody can."

"It's tricky, because we don't have any IPB - Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield," she explained to Fujin. At his nod, she continued. "Your available assets are basically each other, and each others' skill. Your constraints are the lack of technology. I assume your devices won't work. I expect it. I also assume there will be enemies there, and that it won't be a completely dead zone like we think Area X is. I suggest the first thing you do is a sweep, and find a place where your devices work, if there is one. Okay?"

"Yeah," Cassie said.

"Your orders are coming straight from me, so I will do all the paperwork. The write-ups of the restated mission, the commander's intents, all that jazz. You have your analysis and approval from me. Functions and capabilities of this mission are to move through the area, sense the environment, the dangers, anticipate any hostile situations, or the condition of your targets. Investigate anything that seems suspicious, search for your targets, communicate with them and each other, potentially engage any hostiles, and evacuate yourselves, and your targets. It will require your full range of cognitive decision making as well. Be fast and be efficient, but be thorough. Understand?

"Sergeant Cage, you and your team will carry out this mission: Sergeant Cassandra Cage, Specialist Jacqueline Briggs, Chujin Takahashi Takeda, and Shaolin Kung Jin. Your targets are Raiden, Hanzo Hasashi, Sub-Zero, Liu Kang, Kung Lao, Jackson Briggs, and Takahashi Kenshi. Your predicted risk level is high. Especially so because our highest-ranking soldiers were unable to complete it.

"Effects . . . Two levels. You've got personal effects and the effects of your success on your surroundings. I have to say it: you could find them dead. You could find them mortally wounded. You could find them physically fine, but mentally incapacitated. Okay? The margin of variables is a large one. No matter what, you must be prepared to deal with whatever you see. Because the safety of our best, and the world's best, and two of your fathers hangs in the balance. As for the overall effects, we'll have lost all of our best to that hell-hole should you fail, or if they're already dead."

She turned to Fujin. "And that's your Seven Level debriefing. Any questions? From anybody?"

Takeda shook his head, waiting for anybody to ask something. The think silence that answered him was answer enough to any question. They all felt the weight of their task. They all felt the pressure of success.

"To think that Raiden is lost there . . . " Fujin began. The utter disbelief coming from a god sank Takeda's own heart, even more than it was already sunk.

"I know," General Blade said, lowering her eyes. "But they'll find him. Everybody take your time, gear up, and lemme know when you're ready. I'll call Fujin back, and you'll be off."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So this semester kicked my ass. I took 24 credits. That's 7 over the full-time limit. And I took a nose-dive off the deep end because of it. I was so stressed out with so many projects due at once that I ended up having a grade so low I have to retake a class. That sucks. But it's summer now and I'm getting a job and I'll still have time to update - way more time than I had this past semester. Thanks to all who have stayed with this for this long, and leave a review if you have time!
> 
> -Keyblader


	6. Chapter 6

"How many climate suits are you taking?" Jin asked.

"Just two," Takeda said, "but they're not the military's. They're my Shirai Ryu ninja suits. I'm wearing the white one for heat, and packing the thick black one for cold." He rolled the black one up and stuffed it firmly into the bottom of his tiny pack. He added, "General Blade said to pack for deserts, but you never know. We could end up in a frozen tundra."

"That's true," Jin nodded. "I guess I'll pack a couple layers, too, for under my vest."

"Just make sure they don't take up a whole lot of room in your bag. We still need room for extra weapons, food-"

"I know, I know." Jin shrugged. "If worst comes to worst we can always ditch what we don't need."

"I'd rather not have to ditch stuff."

Jin shot him a look. _Okay_? "Then pack what you want."

Takeda decided to ignore the quip. He refused to be annoyed before this mission. All four of them were probably high-strung as it was, and he knew he'd only make it worse if he added to it. He let a thick silence cloud in the air like humidity while he dug through his clothing drawers. Okay, so he had both his suits, what else? Under Armor, warm and cold. Once he found each he tossed the warm gear on his bed next to the suit and folded the cold gear nice and neat, noting out of the corner of his eyes how Jin messily shoved everything into his bag. It was only about the size of a plastic bag - if he didn't fold everything up, he wouldn't have enough room for his portion of their supplies, and if they didn't have enough room for all their supplies then they wouldn't be able to take everything they needed, and if they couldn't take everything they needed they may run into an emergency, and if they ran into an emergency without supplies then they wouldn't be prepared-

. . . Geez. He really was high-strung.

He moved to his closet and pulled his chest plate out with the shoulder pads and leather gauntlets already attached by the whips, throwing them on the bed as well. His whips' wheels were already secured to the back and the ropes were already fed through the gauntlets, he'd just have to slip them on his arms when he dressed. He tossed four extra wheels and some tools in his pack in case he needed to replace them out in the field. Set out his greaves and shoe guards. What else, shoulder guards? Already attached to his suit. Any extra armor would only take up unnecessary space, so he decided to only bring the set he'd wear.

" _Hope it doesn't get too damaged to use. God, stop it_!" he yelled at himself. " _You're literally going to be fine_!" He wondered if Jin was at all as nervous as he was, or if he was thinking any of the same things. Takeda checked his peripheral again, but to his frustration, Jin didn't look nervous at all. His brow was set in thought as he went through his mental checklist. Otherwise, nothing. Takeda gently scanned his mind, seeing if he could pick anything up.

" _. . . keeping all my chakrams on me. I can make extra arrows if I have to_."

"You might not be able to," Takeda answered aloud. "What if there's no wood or whatever?"

Jin glared at him. "Shaolin arrows are made from a special wood. Which I have."

Takeda snorted. "You just carry a hunk of wood around-" He caught Jin's glare and stopped himself.

"Yes. And stay out of my head!"

"Sorry." Scarf on the bed, gloves on the bed, headband on the bed, and he decided he was ready to dress.

He left his compression shorts on, but changed his tank top for the Under Armor. Pulling it on over his head, he made sure it laid completely flat against his chest and back. He grabbed his white body suit next and unzipped it the whole way, stepping into it. Almost immediately his feet got stuck in the skin-tight legs, so he had to sit down to pull them through. He could tell he wasn't focused. He could tell he was scared. Really, really scared of this mission. He felt like he was watching himself from someone else's point of view. Like it wasn't really him about to leave on the most dangerous mission of his life. He would wake up and be safe. And Jacqui would be safe. And as he sat, he felt hyperaware of the silence and his surroundings. Hyperaware of his breathing and his body. He felt like he could see every stitch in his suit. He felt like he could hear the stuff in Jin's pack settle. He felt odd, like he wasn't moving of his own volition. Like he had to tell his arms and fingers to move - grab the pant leg. Curl your fingers around it. Open it up. Slide your foot through. Grab the other. Repeat.

It wasn't real.

And yet, every time he blinked, he still woke up in that person's body and watched them get dressed.

Before he pulled his arms through his suit, he inched back on his bed and sat cross-legged, closing his eyes for some meditative breathing. He felt the cool air, taking a few shallow breaths first to root himself in his surroundings and the feeling of the room and the air. As soon as he felt ready he pulled in a slow, deep breath. Imagining it rushing into his lungs, filling fully, all the way down to his belly button. He imagined his ribs expanding, his chest opening up. Grounding him. Air rushing through his nose, down his throat, into his lungs. Relaxing. He took ten deep breaths, then opened his eyes.

Already, he felt better. A little less heavy, a little more clear of mind. He shimmied off his bed and shook it out, going limb-by-limb until he felt completely relaxed.

"You okay?" Jin asked. It startled Takeda a bit. He forgot anyone else was in the room.

"Yup!" he said brightly, and he meant it. "I just needed to calm down a bit. This mission's stressing me out." He grabbed the pair of white leather gloves off the bed and stretched them on, hoping Jin would react somehow to what he said. Either a, 'Me too,' or, a condescending chuckle. Something. He didn't. Takeda fed his arms through the suit and through his whip gauntlets, but he had to undo the buckles to position them right. With only one arm he couldn't get them clasped again. "Hey, Jin, help me out," he said, crossing the room. "Zip me up, and buckle these up for me."

Jin did as he was told without a fight, and once his suit and gauntlets were on and comfortable, he pulled his sandals and guards on, and strapped up his greaves. Stepped into his body armor and made sure the cup was positioned comfortably before snapping all the buckles into place. He let his whips out to make sure they were working, and once he felt good, he gently wound the scarf around his neck, and tied the headband around his hair.

"Ready to go?" Jin asked.

"Yeah. Lemme just . . . extra clothes, extra shoes, extra equipment . . . " he mumbled, going through his checklist. " . . . Mask," he decided. He grabbed it from his drawer and tossed it into his pack. "Hm . . . I think I'm good. We'll get provisions and hygiene stuff from General Blade. You good, Jin?"

"Yup."

"Alright." He walked out of the room with the dreadful but familiar feeling that he was forgetting something, but he knew he wasn't. "Did you pack cold gear?" he asked Jin.

"Yes."

"Extra weapons?"

"Yes."

"Extra . . . underwear?"

Jin smirked. "Yes, mom."

"Good." The two of them waited outside of Cassie and Jacqui's room until they were done. Takeda decided to double check with the two of them.

" _Jacqui_ ," he thought, projecting it for her.

" _I can hear you._ "

" _Make sure you pack cold gear just in case. And extra clothes and weapons and clips-_ "

" _Yeah, yeah, we're already on top of it. Thanks, mom_ ," Cassie sent to him.

" _Hey! I called him mom_!" Jin chuckled. The door opened up, and the two of them shuffled out, carrying their half-empty packs on their backs.

"Mom texted me. She's in the mess hall with our extra food and stuff. She said once we pick that stuff up we're good to go whenever." As she spoke she pushed her way to the front and led the group. They followed behind, and the four of them trudged along in silence. Takeda wondered if they were thinking about the mission as much as he was. Or if Jacqui was thinking about her father. If they were worried about finding them dead, dying themselves?

General Blade didn't have a whole lot to say either when they made it to the mess hall. She had their supplies split into four even piles, enough for their small packs. "Don't forget to ration," she told them. "Eat for survival right from the get-go. You're there for a week, remember? Before you go M.I.A. Here're your comm devices. Maps of the surrounding areas. Map paper to draw one of the area if your devices don't work. GPS and ground coordinates. Compasses. I have full confidence in you guys."

They were silent while they packed. Every clink of the cans or rustle of the pack seemed to hang dead in the air. Once they were all packed, General Blade led them to the recon tent.

Fujin was already there. He had his arms crossed, and his finger on his chin in contemplation. Once he saw them, he dropped his quizzical look. "Cassandra. Is your team ready?" he asked, straightening his shoulders to them once he saw them. She looked down the line and met eyes with each of them. At their nod, she nodded as well.

"Yes."

General Blade stepped forward. "Remember: protect yourselves, and protect each other. Anticipate the worst, hope for the best. And for the love of god, someone watch the rear!" Cassie and Jin chuckled at the reference. She grabbed Cassie and hugged her close. "Good luck," she said, eyeing her at arm's length.

"Thanks," Cassie said. "See you in a week, mom."

"Ready?" Fujin asked. Cassie stepped back with the rest of them and nodded. "Take each other's hand, and mine," he said, holding his hand out to Jacqui. As soon as they were all ready Fujin looked up, and the wind picked up around them. Swirling and swirling and swirling, picking up the dust and dirt around them in a small tornado. It seemed to suck the air straight from Takeda's lungs, and he shut his eyes tight against it. There was a moment of weightlessness. The ground disappeared from his feet and he had to resist the urge to flail. The others let out a gasp of surprise as well, and Jacqui's hand started to crush his. The blackness behind his eyes seemed to grow thicker, deeper, and then his feet were on solid ground.

He opened his eyes and saw white. White everywhere.

Snow.

The flurries fell thick around them, covering the dead trees and bushes. The wind whistled around them, and Takeda was glad he packed warm gear. He impulsively crossed his arms, huddling in on himself for warmth, but the biting chill never ripped through his layers. He bent down, picking up a handful of snow that glowed in a patch of moonlight, and grunted in surprise. It was lukewarm.

"Uuuh, guys? The snow's not cold."

"Neither is the breeze," Fujin said distantly. "It's . . . unnerving. Raiden!" he yelled. "Raiden! Can you hear me?"

Takeda took stock of their surroundings. It looked like they were in a small courtyard. There were stone pillars around them, fenced in by wrought-iron. Lit torches atop some of the stone, adding a pale and haunting yellow light to the natural white light of the moon. Dead tree branches and overgrown shrubs everywhere, it looked like it hadn't been touched in years, let alone a few weeks ago by Raiden and the others.

"Are those . . . graves?" Cassie asked. Takeda followed her gaze, tracing the wrought-iron fence around them. In the middle of their small courtyard were three tombs lining the fence. Two on either side of a gate directly across from them, and one looming almost directly in front of them. Cassie walked straight up to the first one.

"Don't touch anything," Fujin warned her.

Either she didn't hear, or didn't care. She brushed snow away from the inscription, tracing it with her fingers once it was clear. "Hm," she frowned. "I can't read it."

"This is as far as I dare go," Fujin said, backing away from the grave, and from the four of them. "I must leave you. I wish you good fortune. I will return here in a week to collect you. If you are not there, I will assume the worst." Without another word, the tornado picked up around him, and when it settled, he was gone.

"See ya," Jin muttered.

Takeda's curiosity spurred him forward, and he took his first steps in the area, making his own footprints in the fresh snow. Already it felt wrong, like he wasn't meant to be there, defiling the stillness. He crouched behind Cassie with Jacqui and Jin.

"Someone you know, Cass?" Jin joked.

Cassie chuckled. "Just checking to see how old these are. The writing's a little worn, but still readable. I just can't understand the language."

"I recognize the symbols as being from an Outworld language. Which makes sense considering the bust resembles Shao Khan. Let's check out the other two," he said, crossing the small courtyard to the gravesite on the left. The sculpted skeleton wore a black hooded robe and held a book out in front of it. Jin knelt and looked for the same writing. "I can't even find it on this one."

"It's on that little gate-thing in the front," Jacqui said, pointing to an archway sculpted into the base. Jin brushed some snow away from it.

" . . . It looks a little older than the other one. It's in an Outworld language, too."

While they inspected it, Takeda looked at the third. The skeleton sat on a high-backed chair. It's bone forehead was sculpted into furrowed eyebrows, and with the grin it looked sinister. Like it was staring knowingly at Takeda. He shuddered and turned away, desperate to remove himself from the skull's line of sight. He still felt its eye sockets on his back, even as he huddled a little closer to Jacqui than usual. A tightness seemed to ball up in his stomach. Rolling and twisting on itself. He shouldn't be there. He wanted to curl up into that ball and just disappear. The skeleton wouldn't stop staring at him.

"Feel how soft this dirt is," Jin said, scooping up a wet handful. "Fresh, you think?" he asked.

"Probably just the snow making it moist," he suggested. ' _What else could it be?'_ rang in his mind like an alarm bell, desperate to send the rest of him into chaos. He quickly banished the thought, hoping he didn't accidentally project it for someone to read.

"Hey," Cassie said, "Let's check our devices." She shrugged her pack off her shoulder and opened it up, digging for her comm device. Takeda pulled his as well, hitting the small button on the side to bring it to life. It refused to respond.

"Geez, mine won't even turn on!" Jacqui said.

Takeda shrugged. "Me either."

"Me either," Cassie said, gently smacking it into her palm. "Woah! And look at the compass!" She held it out for the four of them to see. The needle spun in all different directions, around and around and around the center. The digital clock on the side ran wild as well, continuously counting up the seconds and minutes wildly. "Fuck . . . " she breathed. She discarded the two of them into the snow and dug into a pouch on her belt for cell phone. Her lock screen lit up, but the clock on it ran rampant too.

Cassie quickly unlocked it and punched in General Blade's number. The four of them watched, waiting to see if the cell phone would even dial. It only took a few seconds for Cassie to shake her head. "Didn't even ring," she said. "So, no comm, no cell phones, what else?" She pulled a hand-held walkie-talkie out of another pouch.

"Man, that's old school," Jacqui said.

Cassie shrugged. "We figured we may as well try it." She flipped to a channel. "General Blade, this is Sergeant Cage. Do you copy? Sergeant Cage to General Blade, do you copy?" Cassie flipped to a new channel. "Cage to Blade, do you copy?"

"We're not even getting static," Jin said.

" _Shh_!" New channel. "Sergeant Cage to General Blade, do you copy?"

"Don't even bother," Jin said. "There's no static-"

"Jin, shut up," Cassie warned. She went through each individual channel before discarding the walkie talkie as well. "Okay, well we're officially screwed on the technology front."

Jacqui shrugged. "I mean, it's nothing we weren't expecting, right? General Blade said our devices wouldn't work. I wouldn't throw those away, though. She wanted us to do a sweep and find if there was an area where they do work."

"We don't know how big the area is, though," Cassie countered. "That could take days off our mission if it ends up being large."

"It's a graveyard!" Jin said. He threw his arms out, spinning around to gesture to the entire courtyard. "How big could it be?"

Cassie leveled a glare at him. "Let's find out," she said defiantly, practically stomping towards the black wrought-iron gate. Upon closer inspection, Takeda saw it had the Mortal Kombat dragon on it. It sat a small ways into a narrow stone corridor, and as she left the soft glow of the torches, the darkness seemed to swallow her up. A burst of fear wormed its way into his heart, and before he could check it, a rogue, stomach-churning fear that she would be eaten alive by the darkness propelled him forward. He walked until he had her back in his sights, childishly afraid that she would be gone forever if someone didn't keep her in their field of vision.

This place gave him the creeps. He felt like he was being watched.

Cassie pressed her entire body up to the bars, and jammed her face between two of them. "It looks like . . . open area. Like a straight path that just goes back. I can't see the other side. It's too dark over there." Jin walked up behind her, and dug into his pack until he emerged with a flashlight. He pointed it between the bars, but it didn't reach any farther than Cassie's vision. The darkness was too intense.

"Help me push this open," he said. He clamped the flashlight between his teeth and threw his shoulder into the gate to force it open. The rusted, rotten hinges screamed in protest, and Takeda chafed at the harsh sound as it echoed through every inch of wherever they were. He didn't know where those inches could be, but he was sure they heard it. Cassie was about to barrel into the other one before he stopped her.

"Don't! We only need one gate open, right?" She stared at him, then shrugged.

"You twitchy, Tak?"

" . . . Yeah," he muttered. He quickly scanned her mind to see if she was at all, but unfortunately, she had a block set up around her psyche. Either she was scared too and didn't want him to know, or she was subconsciously guarded against the whole world. Jin and Cassie forged their path ahead, and Takeda stayed and waited for Jacqui to squeeze through the fence.

"You okay?"

"Yeah!" she said brightly, but when she looked up at him, he could see it in her eyes. She was disconcerted with the area too. He gave her hand a little squeeze, happy for her company. Just knowing he wasn't alone was a bit of a relief to him. The two of them followed Cassie and Jin into the new area, and what they saw froze them.

What Cassie thought was an open area was actually a straight path, through the middle of row after row of tombstones. Most of them were old, extremely old, crumbling under the duress of perpetual weathering. The grey, dead trees and wild bushes that sprang up randomly had even tilted and uprooted a few. Thick, tendril-like vines crept up the stone barrier enclosing the area, but even some of the stone was cracked and falling away. The path forward seemed to stretch into eternity, and the only thing Takeda could see at the end was a gaping maw of darkness. An arc like a portal, sucking in the rest of the darkness, with the exception of two yellow torches somewhere in the far right corner.

Takeda wanted to go back there, but not without someone else. Everywhere he looked there were skeletons, dragons, skulls and empty sockets staring, staring. He shouldn't be there. He was disrupting their silence. He was disturbing their hallowed space, reserved for them to do what they will. And he was afraid if he went back there alone, they would grab onto him and drag him away.

The ball in his stomach rolled bigger. The urge to run tickled his nerves.

"Holy shit," Cassie breathed, looking around. "Who are all these people? Kombatants?"

Jin wormed his way between a tree and another stone on their right and went straight up to a headstone with a dragon coiled around it. "Maybe victors are buried here?" Jin paused. "Wait, yeah! Gotta be. Because the losers forfeit their souls. And look. This is the symbol for the Mortal Kombat tournament, isn't it?" He checked the name. "This one's in Chinese! Qi- . . . Qiàng . . . Zāi . . . Qiàng Zāilǐ - no way!"

"What?"

"This man was a Shaolin! A _fourth generation_ Shaolin! This grave dates back to the Yuan dynasty, from 1271 through 1368. This could be seven hundred years old."

"How can you tell?" Takeda asked.

"Okay, so Shaolin have a naming thing when we're initiated. It's based off this poem that Abbot Xueting Fuyu wrote - he was a really important guy in unifying a specific style of Kung Fu that we now know as 'Shaolin technique'," he said, airquoting. "Anyway, each generation of initiates is numbered, and there's a name that corresponds with their number. _Zi_ corresponds to the fourth generation for this guy. That's how I know. We take our family name, so mine would be Kung, right? Then our generation number name, then our first name. So since I'm a thirty-seventh generation Shaolin, my number name is _Ti_. Then stick it all together. Kung Ti Jin. The Shaolin have to memorize the poem and the numbers."

"That's kind of awesome," Cassie admitted. "How come we never called you that?"

Jin shook his head dismissively. "Everybody knows Kung Lao and Liu Kang, and they never used their Shaolin names. I was just following in their footsteps, really. Here's another dragon!" he yelled, sprinting to the back left corner.

"Be careful, Jin!" Takeda yelled. The whole time they talked, he inspected the soil. It was way too fresh for his tastes. And it was only so soft in front of the graves. How could a seven hundred year old grave have fresh dirt?

He signed, standing from his crouch. He spun around and came face to face with Jacqui. He knew it was Jacqui. But the pale moonlight cast deep shadows over her cheeks and made her look . . .

"Geez!" he yelled. "Scared me."

"Sorry. What are you frowning about?"

"The dirt's kinda bothering me. It's too soft. The snow should've settled over these graves by now. You don't think that's odd?"

"This guy's name was Jin, too!" Jin announced like an overexcited child. "Wǔ Hǎi Jìn!"

"A little," Jacqui began, shrugging. "But the dirt's still flat on the top - Cool, Jin! - if something were trying to get in, or out," she said, staring hard at him, "they'd have to be pretty meticulous to get the dirt as perfect as when they first got there."

"I don't know. It makes me uneasy."

"I won't lie, me too. But think about it. Whatever you're implying's just not possible."

He looked over her shoulder and stared at the dirt again. " . . . I'm not implying anything," he said carefully. "And I'm not trying to sound all paranoid, or anything. It's not like I'm suggesting they suddenly woke up and felt compelled to see the light of day."

"That's not what-"

"Just forget it. Let's keep looking around." He walked up to a stone, shaped like a tall lantern. His feet sunk into the wet ground and he had to practically straddle the dry dirt on either side. Inspecting the tombstone, the skulls sat positioned around the top, and sculpted hands reached up the base as if to claw at whatever was at the top. Takeda shuddered despite himself. Was no one else feeling creeped out? "This place gives me the creeps! Anyone see any Shirai Ryu?"

"I don't see any military," Cassie said, picking amongst the stones.

Jin shook his head. "You wouldn't. The tournament's once every five hundred years, and the last tournament was, what, 20 years ago? Nightwolf, and your parents were the first Americans."

"Really?!" Cassie asked, eyebrows raising.

"Yeah! You didn't know that?"

"I mean, I knew my mom and dad were badass, but I didn't know they were that badass!"

Takeda took to the stone wall and followed along the right side from where they entered, noting huge chunks of rock that had fallen in from the rocky crags that stretched higher and higher above them as he drew further back. But they looked . . . odd. Insubstantial. Like they were fake. He drew closer and closer to the torches, and as moonlight morphed into yellow light, he knew why they looked odd. The entrance to the cave opened like a labyrinth in front of him. Covered in spider webs.

Huge spider webs. Inch-thick spider webs.

"Uuuuh, Jacqui? C'mere."


	7. Chapter 7

"Holy crap," Jacqui breathed, eyeing the webs warily. They were flecked with grime and dirt. And animals, Takeda noted. Bulges in the webbing varied from the size of small raccoons to entire pumas. And the stench and sight of rotting flesh clinging to the webs led him to believe some weren't whole animals. "Eww, that's so gross!" she said. "Cassie, come look! This is soooo gross!"

Cassie's boots crunched in the snow up to them, but Takeda couldn't pull his eyes away from the gorey webs. "Oh my god," Cassie muttered. "Uuuuh, those are spider webs! Like, giant-ass spider webs! What is this, a cave?"

"It looks like it," Jacqui said. "The webs are covering the entrance."

"Should we . . . burn them away?" Jin asked. His voice was unusually quiet and subdued. Takeda tried not to notice but as soon as he mentioned it his mind latched on.

They were just as afraid as he was now.

"You really wanna go down there?" Takeda asked. "I don't know if that's a good idea."

"But Kenshi and Jax . . . " Jacqui said.

"If there are spiders in there, and we let them out-" He shuddered before he could finish his sentence. A mental image assaulted him, of tiny, pea-sized spiders crawling all over him. In his hair, on his face, in his eyes, their fuzzy bodies tickling and biting and pinching and-

"Ugh! Tak, stop it!" Cassie yelled, rubbing her eyes furiously as though to wipe the image away. "That's fucking gross!" Takeda didn't even realize he accidentally projected it.

"Sorry," he quickly checked all their faces. All of them looked terrified and mildly gross out, and guilt nibbled at him. He hoped he didn't make it worse.

"I'm gonna clear them," Jin said.

"Jin-" Takeda protested.

"We have to go down there and explore a little. A, for Kenshi and Jax, and B, for intel collection." Jin gently tapped his staff on the ground and the little pearl inside turned from blue to red. It glowed with the fire energy inside. He took a hesitant step towards the webs, staring them down with wide eyes.

"Jin, don't!" he tried again. "You'll let the spiders out!" The spiders capable of making webs as large as the ones they saw. Webs so strong they can trap giant animals. And they'd be scuttling across the snow and the four of them would be overrun.

Jin paused, and for a moment, Takeda thought his protests worked. He checked the faces of the other three, then turned back towards the cave entrance.

"Jin-" Takeda's protests died on his lips. Jin touched his staff to the webs in front of the cave entrance, they lit up, burning like a small candle.

They burned away quickly, opening up to the recesses of a dark cavern like the gaping maw of a beast. Going to swallow them up. Strands of delicate, sticky webs hung loosely from the ceiling like stalagmites. "The size of those . . . the spiders are probably as big as us."

"Really?" Cassie said, raising her eyebrows.

"Maybe bigger. They can snag prey as big as us anyway. Those are probably really sticky. Just remember: don't touch them," Jin said.

"Ladies first," Takeda said, taking a step back for Cassie. Their eyes met briefly. " _We shouldn't go down there_ ," he tried to say with his eyes. He turned to face her and stared at her deeply, but either she didn't pick up on his hints, or she ignored them. He even tried to send the thought to her, but she had a wall around her consciousness, blocking him out.

"Ha-ha. Ladies first. Funny," she sneered. Takeda let a stiff smile crawl up his cheeks that didn't reach his eyes, and Cassie knew he wasn't kidding. She sighed, drawing her gun from the holster on her back. "You guys are such losers." She took a cautionary step down into the cavern, crouched low in fear of the hanging death traps. "Can I get some light here?" she asked.

Takeda took the orange glow stick off his belt and she cracked it on the floor, shaking it to get some light to it faster. The sharp clack! echoed over and over and over again into the cave. A brief example (or a warning) of how deep they really were. Cassie held the stick in front of her, swallowing thickly, glancing precariously at the round cave closing in around them. Closing them in its depths. Normally one of them would have made a crack at her being scared, but each of them was just as wary as she was. She took another step into the depths, then another, then another. And Takeda watched. Hesitation, gut-wrenching fear glued his feet to the floor and he couldn't follow her. He couldn't. He grabbed her shoulder.

" _Cassie, please_ ," he actually thought, projecting it for her whether she heard it or not. She shook him off.

"Stop it! We need to go down there, Tak. We need to explore. We have people to find, maps to make, etcetera, etcetera. And what if Jax or Kenshi's down there?" she asked. "Or Hanzo? What about Hanzo?"

He froze. Hanzo . . . he couldn't leave Hanzo . . . What if he was down there - Cassie pressed forward, step by step, and panic froze Takeda where he was. Follow her, or don't follow her? Take the chance Hanzo is down there and risk the spiders, or explore topside and take the chance he saved himself from them? And as he watched her descend further and further, the tingling to chase after her built in his legs. But he couldn't bring himself to follow her. Going down there felt so wrong to him, he couldn't.

She turned back to the others. Saw them still on the surface.

"Guys, come on! I am not going down here alone, fuck that!"

"You next, Takeda," Jacqui said quickly, "Jin'll bring up the rear."

"Why me?" Jin asked, staring incredulously at her.

Cassie chuckled darkly, "Because in all the horror movies the people in the front of the group and the back of the group die first!"

"Cass!" Jacqui sputtered. "That is not why I want him to go last! It's just a diamond formation! You're just bringing up the rear! Don't forget to watch our backs."

Jin mumbled something unintelligible, so Takeda took it as the end of the conversation. He guessed the group decided for him. He sighed and ducked down into the cave with Cassie despite the growing fear gnawing at the lining of his stomach. He trained his eyes into the darkness in front of them as though it would change the lighting for him. He was relieved when Cassie waited for him to nudge her shoulder before she continued.

The orange glow of the stick bathed the walls in a sickly, pale light, glaring threateningly off the salts on the walls and the wet spider webs. She went slow, step by step by step, taking a few moments each time to bathe another inch of the tunnel in the scrutiny of the light. It was slow going, and every so often Takeda sensed her fear spike and her pulse quicken. To reassure her that he was behind her (and to reassure himself that she was still there), he occasionally reached out and lightly grazed her back. He hoped that Jacqui and Jin were doing the same, for sake of his pride.

Suddenly, a scuffling sound permeated the cave around them. Cassie's boot slipped on the dirt, and she flailed wildly, flicking the light all around them in a dizzying strobe. She caught her balance, but splashed ankle deep into whatever condensation was pooling in the cave and let out a noise of disgust. "Ugh! Nooooo," she moaned. "These were new boots!"

"What do you mean, 'new'? They're standard issue!" Jin argued incredulously.

"And I just got them yesterday!" She picked a foot out and shook the droplets of water off of it. "Now my socks are wet from cave water!"

"Wet socks are the worst," Jacqui mumbled.

They were getting off-topic. And making noise. "Are we gonna keep going?" Takeda asked quietly.

"Just watch your feet," Cassie grumbled. She waited and listened as each person splashed in behind her.

The puddles were freezing cold. Before he could stop himself, Takeda gasped when it soaked into his shoes and pooled between his toes. His socks immediately clung to his feet, making it worse. " _Shit, there go my socks_ ," he thought to himself, lamenting the loss of his comfort, when Cassie threw her hand out and barred their path.

" _Shh_! Listen!" she suddenly hissed.

"Spider!" he thought. "Oh god, oh god, oh god-" The images were back. Takeda froze dead where he was, imagining the scuttling of a giant, hairy spider. The breath froze in his lungs and his blood ran cold, his heart pumped furiously, and he put his fists up, ready to defend against a tangle of glossy eyes and boney fangs.

"Hear that? Our voices are echoing better. I think the cavern's opened up," Cassie muttered. Takeda's shoulders slumped with his sigh, and he finally released the breath he was holding. He eased the strain on his heart while she took larger, more confident steps into the water, eyeing what she could around her. She fixed the light on something in front of her and inched forward. "Is that . . . ?" she asked, squinting into the darkness just beyond the light's beam. Stepping forward into dry patches of dirt, she held it just a little higher to reveal a deep red stain on the cavern. "Okay, so that's blood on the wall. And it's fresh-"

A squeal like nails on a chalkboard rocketed out of the blackness. Brown, fuzzy movement shot across the light, crawling over the blood. "OH MY GOD!" Cassie screamed. She backpedaled straight into the four of them and they all retreated a few steps, back to the stairs. She held her arm up and tried to cast the light across the creature again, but it was already long gone. "Did you all see that? You all saw that, right? That's a huge fucking spider!"

"I warned you!" Jin bellowed, panting.

Takeda grabbed Jacqui's shoulder, gently pulling her towards the door. "I don't like this place. Can we leave?"

"Our dads may be in here!" Jacqui said.

"Look at the SIZE of those things! Your dads could also be DEAD!" Jin snapped.

"Don't say that!" Takeda whined. One of those things could have dragged Kenshi or Hanzo down into the depth of the cave, screaming. It could've ate them already. It could've wrapped them up in its web and-

Jacqui yelled next. "It didn't attack us . . . maybe they're-"

"Don't even be that stupid!" Cassie said.

"We need to explore. This is all unmarked territory. What if Kenshi or my dad's down here?" Jacqui said again. "Please, let's go. I'll take point if you want me to."

"No way! . . . This is fucked up," Cassie muttered. "This is so fucked up! Whyyyyy do we have to dooooo thiiiiiis," she sing-songed. "That scared the shit out of me!" she screamed. Her voice echoed so deeply in the caverns that the silence immediately following was almost deafening.

"Me too."

"Same."

"Yup."

The four of them sat in silence, until Cassie finally said, "Do you want to . . . like, camp out here or something? Next to the stairs? We can prepare for what's down here."

"If we're gonna camp out, we may as well go above ground," Jin said. "Start drawing maps, recording data, and make sure we're ready."

"Well if we're going up, I say we just explore topside!" Takeda offered. " _Please, let's just explore topside. I already hate this place._ There's still more of the graveyard. Who knows how far back it goes?"

"What do you think, Cass?" Jacqui asked. "You're the leader. It's your decision."

All three of them turned towards her, unintentionally circling around her as if to corner her. She took an involuntary step back.

"Let's . . . " Cassie started. "Let's just . . . "

"Let's go topside!" Takeda said.

" . . . Yeah. Let's do that," she finally decided.

Takeda released the breath he was holding with a whoosh. Ran a hand through his hair. "Let's go, then. Now. I don't want to run into any more spiders."

He led the way, and the four of them slipped and slid back up the slick incline towards the graveyard. About halfway up the fresh air hit him, clean and clear and sharp, and with it a rush of relief. They didn't have to go down there for a while. The graveyard that creeped him out so badly on their way in suddenly wasn't so bad. A lot better than the spiders' home.

He grabbed the outside of the wall to haul himself up, and as soon as he had secure footing, he turned around and helped each of them out of the hole, too. Cassie collapsed down on the snow and stared up at the sky, and sparse canopy of trees that stretched above. "Geez, that was wild," she breathed. "Yeah, let's set up camp up here. Wherever we decide to stay."

"Agreed," Takeda muttered. "For now, let's keep going. What time is- nevermind."

"Our mission stopwatch says we've been here for about an hour. But I don't know what time it is," Jin said, checking the stopwatch on his belt.

"An hour . . . that's it?" Cassie moaned. "How are we supposed to know when to set up camp and when to rest and everything?"

Jin shrugged. "Beats me. Maybe we should just rest when we're tired?"

"Someone's always gotta keep watch, though," Jacqui reminded them. "If we're all beat and then someone tries to take watch we're gonna have a long, rough night."

"How about this," Jin offered. "We go until our stopwatch says three hours. Wherever we are, we'll make camp then, rest for another three hours, and keep going."

"Three hour increments sounds fair," Cassie said. "Good idea, Jin." She picked herself up off the snow and dusted some off her back. "Let's keep going, then. We've got two more hours to go." She put her gun back in the holster on her back and started walking. The authoritativeness was back in her voice and in her step. She sounded like she recovered, and was ready to take control again. "Obviously this section of the graveyard ends over there. So let's go this way."

They followed her to the front corner of the graveyard, directly to the left of where they came in. The rocks that encircled the spider cave's entrance wrapped around the entire rectangle, and as they traveled quietly down the short path to a neighboring section, the rocks and crags even arched and bridged over the entrance way to encase them on either side of their path. Blocking out the moonlight sometimes.

Still, it was amazing how bright it looked out in the open compared to the caverns. He felt like his eyes were adjusted, and he could still see much better than before.

When the new area opened up, Takeda immediately noticed more tombstones.

Dozens more. All with wet dirt. Shoot. He forgot about how odd that was while they were down in the caverns.

Jin stopped in front of him. "Hold on. Let me do some stuff." He set his pack down and dug through it, pulling out the map paper, a pencil, and another thick, leather-bound book. He used the book as a hard surface to draw on, and began making a small square in the bottom right corner, using the torches straddling the entranceway for light. "So this is the courtyard where we entered," he told them as they watched. "Then that opened into the first area of gravestones." He drew a bigger square directly on top. "And the spider caverns are over here, in the far right corner." He marked them with a little 'x' on the page. "If we go down there, I'll make a separate map for them. And then there was another path that led . . . here, to where we are now." He drew the edge of the square, but left the other sides open until they explored them. "Good?"

They all nodded, and he packed all the stuff away, throwing it in his pack. "I'll mess with details later."

"What's the book for?" Takeda asked.

"Intel. I'm going to record surroundings, conditions, enemy data, yadda yadda."

"Oh."

Jin stood from where he sat down, and the four of them continued to crunch through the snow. The new area wasn't a perfect rectangle. Instead, it was a backwards 'L' shape from what he could see. The entranceway behind them was smack in the middle of the base, and the left side turned in sharply after several rows of stones while the right side was more elongated. The crags fit snug against its shape as well, so whatever was on the other side of that turn-in was blocked by the rocks. This section was darker, he noted. Bigger. The trees blocked out much more of the moonlight than in the previous section; there weren't any torches, save for a couple he couldn't see directly, but whose glare he could see on the snow behind the turn-in. Another set sat further in, directly in front of the four of them and their entranceway. They weren't very bright, and he still couldn't see behind them. They looked like two yellow animal eyes.

This section looked even more overgrown than the last one. In addition to snow, Takeda's feet crunched over dead branches from trees, and dead shrubs. Crushed and dead berries from the healthy bushes looked like blood spatters, and he had to remind himself every time he looked at them to not freak out. Against the white snow they looked especially garish and fresh. The stone wall sank and crumbled away more often, from the weight of the rocks pressing on them. More chunks of grey stone littered the area as well.

And, the dirt was still fresh in this section. The skeletons still stared at him from beneath their furrowed brows. He ignored them. Compared to the scare they just had, a stone skeleton was nothing to him.

Jin wanted to keep picking through the tombstones to find more Shaolin, and he instantly wandered off to inspect them. Takeda didn't share his excitement for it. The dirt was so soft it looked like if someone stood on it they would sink right to the bottom. Or sink until they hit a coffin. Or just a body. What if the people here were free-buried? Ew, then if you fell in you'd step on somebody's bones. That had to be years and years of bad luck. Curses down to the sixth generation of your family or something.

" _Definitely don't wanna curse my family that far down . . . Or ever_?" he added, almost chuckling that he had to add that. It added a bit of humor and alleviated his creeped-out feeling. He walked straight ahead towards the warm glare of yellow torch light reflecting on the snow. On the other side of the rocks rose a set of stairs that climbed up, then turned sharply in.

He started scaling the stairs before remembering that there could be enemies, but then he quickly dismissed the thought. He didn't sense a single creature there. Nothing. Just the whisper of the occasional wind through the knobby tree branches, and their groaning reply. Still, though, as a precaution, he crouched a little lower behind the bricks as he climbed. When he reached the top, he peeked around the bend.

Nothing. Just a gate. He stood up and peered through the bars. Nothing inside except for a tiny square courtyard. Overgrown on all sides, too, the path in the middle led straight to a metal fountain. The torches on the base illuminated a large basin and above it hung a person's limp metal body. A demon with its tail snaked around the man clung protectively around his shoulders with its arms wrapped around his chest - like if someone got too close it would wrench the man away and snap at them. From where he was standing he couldn't see the demon's face. It had it's head reclined low over the person's neck, taking a bite out of it. But it had curled horns and batwings extended straight up.

It was grotesque - the way it sat frozen, captured in dynamic motion like it would come to life at any second and its claws would rip the man open. Its muscles were tense, its lips and face were distorted into a sneer of exertion, or maybe pride in its kill. Takeda couldn't tell. That gross nagging feeling grew again in the pit of his stomach. The feeling that he shouldn't be there, that he was interrupting their space and their actions. He felt like the statue would glare at him at any second. He felt his mind drawn to it - like there was something there for him to read. There wasn't, he thought. There definitely shouldn't be. A panic washed over him, because he _knew_. He knew if he tried to read the statue he'd find something there. Something abhorrent and unnatural that shouldn't be there and he'd be stuck-

He turned and ran. He fled back down the stairs, only feeling safe when he was back in the snow, out of the statue's line of sight. The tingling between his shoulder blades - the eyes on his back - died down and he felt better.

"What's up there, Tak?" Cassie asked. She wasn't looking at him, but as soon as she did her face fell. "What? What's wrong?"

"Nothing's up there. Just a really creepy statue in a courtyard. But it's behind a locked gate."

"Huh," Cassie muttered. She walked past him to go up, and Takeda tried to stop her.

"It's alright. I already went up there."

"I know, but I wanna look! Geez, you're making me edgy! Stop it."

He watched her disappear around the corner. There were a few seconds of dead silence, with the exception of the wind. The next thing he heard was Cassie tugging on the gate, rattling the entire frame. "It's, like, fused shut!" she yelled. "We'd have to blast it open."

"I told you that!" Takeda yelled back to her. "Just, come back down and let's go-"

The breeze picked up. And with it, a feeling of cold that was absent from the snow. It ghosted through every stitch and every fiber of his suit, sending a chill down his spine. He shuddered, quickly crossing his arms tightly. "Did you all feel that?"

"Yeah!" Jacqui called. "It just got colder."

"This is so weird," Jin muttered. "How do you have warm snow and a warm breeze? And there's nothing here to make it cold!"

"We're in the Netherrealm. Somewhere," Cassie said, lightly hopping down the stairs to rejoin the three of them. "This place is already fuckin' weird. I wouldn't look too deeply into it. Time check!" she said, pointing to Jin.

"Uuuh, stop watch says an hour, forty."

"Alright. Let's keep going." Cassie forged ahead, towards the torches that led past the step. Takeda found out why he couldn't see what was beyond them. The rocks arched low over them, and the four of them almost had to duck beneath it. As they followed the narrow stone hallways to the next section, someone behind him said Takeda's name.

" _Takahashi_."

He thought it was Jacqui. When they started walking, he didn't check to see where she was. "Heh, since when do you call me Takahashi?"

"What?" Cassie asked.

"Jacqui just called me Takahashi."

"Uuuh, no? Nope, I didn't," she said, cocking her head to the side.

"Then what'd you say?"

"I didn't say anything."

"I just heard you! You-"

Wait. He heard it behind him. Jacqui was to his side.

He spun around, hoping at least Jin was there, but he was up behind Cassie, right in front of him.

"You okay?" Jacqui asked, grabbing his arm. "Maybe we should stop."

"No! No, it's fine. I just thought I heard something. That's all."

Another wind whipped the snow harder around them. Cassie spun around, looking up into he sky. "Let's just keep moving."

The wind died down, and he heard it again. But a whisper, stuck sheepishly on the tail end. " _Taka- . . ._ " A loud whisper. That floated around him. Light, feathery, and yet completely full. He quickly scanned the area for any presences, but besides the four of them he couldn't sense anybody or anything.

" _It's nothing. Ignore it, ignore it, ignore it-_ "

There was a potency to it. An urgency. " _. . . Taka . . . shi . . ._ " It permeated the breeze. Entered his ears and his mind. " _Takahashi. Takahashi. Takahashi!_ " It increased, louder and louder with each step they took until he couldn't ignore it anymore. It surrounded him, and he froze where he was, unable to do anything except listen to the voice call his name over and over again.

" _Takahashi! TAKAHASHI!_ "

It was coming from up ahead. In the next part of the graveyard. He had to go to it. HAD to.

He took off before even he knew what he was doing. "Takeda!" Jacqui yelled after him, but he didn't stop. Couldn't stop. Not until the voices stopped. The hallways opened up and Takeda bolted past tombs left and right, stopping in front of a set of stone steps that descended down into the ground. Gated in on either side by sharp metal pikes. There were blue stained glass windows illuminated by the moonlight, and the Mortal Kombat dragon roared between them.

He was standing in front of a stone building.

A mausoleum.


	8. Chapter 8

" _Takahashi . . . Takahashi!_ " They were coming from the building. He could hear them. He stared down at the steps, watching the way they descended straight down into the blackness just like the spider caves. He imagined the tendrils waiting down there to grab him and drag him down if he took a single step down there.

He couldn't look away. Something at the bottom was holding his gaze and fixating his mind. Something - no, a lot of voices - were down there and they were calling to him. Begging him to investigate.

Voices. Were they . . . people?

" _Takahashi. Taka . . . Take . . . Takeda_."

They knew his name.

" _Takahashi Takeda. Taka . . . shi . . . keda . . . Takahashi . . . Kenshi!_ "

Kenshi!

"Dad?" he yelled out. "Dad? Are you down there?" He scanned the blackness for any sign of his father, but as soon as his open mind touched whatever people were down there, it was like a floodgate burst. Thousands of faces and voices were unleashed in his mind at once. His senses shut down completely, images and memories that belonged to the throng attacked him, coming and going at a hundred a minute. So fast his eyes couldn't focus on any of them. They flickered and dizzied him, their speeches and thoughts whirled just as fast in his ears.

_Shrine._

_A pond._

_A face._

_Sword._

_Slitting someone's throat._

_A bowl._

_Champaign cork._

_Sweep a storefront._

_"Do you think she'll . . . "_

_"Never in my whole life-"_

_"Aaargh!"_

_"I'm dying, my son . . . "_

_"Mortal Kombat tournament!"_

_"FINISH HIM-"_

_"I'm driving this truck off this bridge."_

It was too much. He stopped breathing, too worried about stopping the onslaught. He tried to shut it down, to put a block around his mind, but there were too many at once.

"Takeda!" Somebody said his name. It sounded far away. "Takeda! Are you alright?" Grabbed his arm. Somebody in the real world. Shook him. The real world . . . he latched on to it as best he could. "Takeda!" they said again, and he focused on that only. His name. His name from that voice. He slowly phased out all the other concepts. Until her voice was the only thing ringing in his head. "Takeda."

Silence.

He opened his eyes, sucking in a huge breath. He looked around and saw her standing over him. The picture unmoving. The snow falling. He was back, though it didn't look real. The image looked too crisp to be real.

"Are you alright?" Jacqui asked.

No. Yes? He was too bewildered to feel anything other than shock. "U-uh . . . There are souls down there," he said. His tongue felt thick and slow. He swallowed thickly. "Lots of souls. I didn't know, and opened my mind to them. They all started pouring in at once."

"Let me help you up." She hooked his arm in hers, and he realized he was on the ground. "You looked like you were having a seizure or something." She led him back, away from the stairs.

"It felt like one," he admitted quietly. He could still feel the thousands of souls down there. He could still feel their tug on his mind to investigate the mausoleum, but he didn't look back. He was afraid it would start again if he did. Cassie didn't seem to be affected by it, he noted, as she passed them. She grabbed the glow stick and tottered a few steps down. Her eyes flicked back and forth for a few seconds, then widened. She gasped, hopping back. "Ew! There aren't just soul down there. There are _faces_ down there!"

"What?" Jin said. He stormed behind her and peered in over her shoulder. "By the gods . . . "

"Are they . . . moving? Those faces are moving for you guys, too, right?" Cassie asked.

"Gods, that's creepy," Jin muttered, shuddering violently.

"What do you mean, faces?" Takeda asked.

"Like . . . a wall. Of faces."

"What?" Jacqui asked.

Takeda's arm was still hooked into Jacqui's, and before he could pull away she had gathered around to look at them as well. Takeda chanced a glance. That was why it kept fading in and out to him before they locked on to him, Takeda realized. They were writhing on top of each other, cheek-to-cheek, pushing themselves to the front to scream their silent screams, to tell him what they wanted to tell him.

"They're souls at least, I think," he said. "Human souls. I can read them. My dad told me I can read souls too, if they're that loud. Like residual energies, yurei, banshees, wraiths, phantoms, and stuff. We just never tried it in my training." Amidst the swirling masses, a single face floated to the front. Takeda focused on that face, and that face alone, and reached out to it. "They kept talking to me. They said my name, and Kenshi's. Maybe they're down there?" he offered. He tried to project a thought to the face, but he couldn't keep a watch on it before it faded back into the mass. He even tried to read past them, closing his mind tight against any other incoming messages, to see if there were any presences in the mausoleum itself. But at the faces, all he met was the feeling of blackness. Of a wall. He tried to push his mind through and see beyond them, but everywhere he directed his energy they quickly tangled and knotted themselves together, blocking him. " _Rrgh_ ," he growled in frustration. "Something's wrong. They won't let me through."

"Okay, like, just a sec," Cassie said. "I've only been wreaking havoc on this planet for twenty-two years. I'd like to say I've _seen_ some shit. I'd like to say I've _done_ some shit. But there are _faces_. Rolling around in there. And your first thought is, 'Oh! Hey! Yeah, let's just take a good ol' stroll through them!' What the hell?"

"It's as though . . . I don't know. For some reason they don't want me to go through there."

" _Takahashi . . . Kenshi . . . Takeda . . . Sento . . . Sento . . . Sento . . . Bloodline . . ._ "

"Sento?" Takeda asked the faces. "Sento is my family's talisman. It is passed through my bloodline. My father, Kenshi, commands Sento now. Do you know him? Has he passed through here?"

" _Sento . . . Sento . . . Sento . . . The Ancient Sword . . . of Warrior . . . ancestral . . ._ "

"Do I . . . need Sento?" Yeah. Even saying the words made sense to him. Either Sento was the only talisman strong enough that he could force his way through, or they would only let him through if he had Sento. Either way, he could tell just from their energy shifting that he needed it. "Well, I don't have it. It's with Takahashi Kenshi, my father. I am his blood," he reiterated, hoping to prove his point.

" _Kenshi . . . Takahashi . . . Sento . . . Warrior Ancestors . . ._ "

"If it's Sento you need, then I have the right to pass! As a direct descendent of the Warrior Kings, and Kenshi's blood, I am worthy to wield the blade!" A certain pride that came with his heritage boosted his confidence. Of course he could get through. "You will let me pass!" he yelled to them.

They didn't take kindly to his order. With his sudden fervor, they changed their phrases. " _Turn back, turn back . . . retreat, retreat, retreat . . . turn back, turn back, retreat, retreat, retreat._ "

"I won't turn back."

"I don't know, Takeda," Jacqui said. "They seemed to affect you pretty strongly. I wouldn't try to power through them."

"I feel like I can make it, though. They keep calling my name and talking to me, and then they don't let me in?" He suddenly squared his shoulders to the wall and stood up a little straighter. He closed his eyes, gently brushing two fingers against his temple as he tried to speak to the souls. "Shit. Now they keep saying, 'Turn back, turn back, retreat, retreat, retreat.' Just like that. Two turn backs, three retreats."

Cassie sighed. "So now what?" she huffed, throwing out her arms.

"We get through," he said matter-of-factly. He had the urge to do it. Suddenly he bellowed out, "I am Takahashi Takeda. I am a direct descendent of the Warrior Kings. Son of Takahashi Kenshi, the master and wielder of Sento! Let us pass!"

All at once, the voices quieted down. Every one of the faces shut their mouths in an eerie display, floating in silence.

Nothing.

"Damn." Takeda's shoulders slumped. His lips pursed as he thought of what to do next. "Uuuuum. . . Those runes are Japanese . . . " Suddenly, he perked up again. He repeated his message but in Japanese, hoping weakly they'd respond to their native language. " _If that's even their native language_ ," he thought sullenly to himself.

"What'd you say?" Jacqui demanded.

He shrugged. "The same thing. Just in Japanese. 'I am Takahashi Takeda. Sento's commander is my father. He is Takahashi Kenshi. Grant our passing.'" He took a cautionary step towards the wall, staring warily at the frozen screams of agony and despair. Repeated the phrase over and over in Japanese. "I am Takahashi Takeda. My father, Takahashi Kenshi, commands the sword Sento. Grant our passing! Grant our passing . . . Grant our passing . . . " He muttered the last sentence over and over again like a mantra.

"Did they say anything back?" Cassie asked. Jacqui quickly hushed her, staring wide-eyed at Takeda.

He edged closer and closer to the barrier, to the faces, finger still touched to his temple, scanning for any kind of reaction. He closed his eyes in concentration then threw out his hand, palm to the door in a sudden burst of mental power. Trying to force himself through. The faces all contorted as if in pain, then all at once their eyes and mouths opened wide, their faces clenched as if physically attacked. They repelled him with a force he never felt before. Like a weight dropped on his mind, they threw his attack right back at him. It felt like they threw his brain around inside his head, and all of a sudden all of them, every single one, started screaming at him.

_"YOU DARE-"_

_"LEADERS OF THE-"_

_"GET OUT! GET OUT!"_

_"GODS CONDEMN-"_

_"BY MY ANCESTORS-"_

_"PAY! YOU WILL PAY! GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT-"_

It ached in his ears. It vibrated inside his head with their volume. Takeda cried out. He felt the cry leave his throat but he couldn't hear himself. He screamed, throwing his hands up to grasp at his temples. His back arched, he dropped like dead weight, hitting the snow hard.

_"THE SWORD! THE SWORD! THE SWORD!"_

"Stopstopstopstop - okay!" he pled with the souls. "Okay, okay! I'm sorry! _Gomennasai_ , _gomennasai_!" It seemed to placate the souls. They retreated from Takeda's mind, and he clamored away, kicking and slipping on the snow until he crashed into Jacqui's shins. "We need Sento. They refuse to allow us entry unless we bring it to them."

"Well where is it?" Jin asked.

"Fuck- I don't KNOW!" he scoffed at Jin. Shooting him a sneer, he climbed to his feet. They were still whispering at him. Hissing their dissent. It was hard to concentrate.

" _Intruderssssss . . . Sento! Impudencccccceeeee . . ._ "

"So, what do we do?"

"We find it!" Jacqui said. "Obviously! What if they're holed up in there or something?"

"How did Kenshi get in there, and Sento's out here?" Jin argued. "What if he's not even down there? Or what if Sento's not even somewhere up here? I don't know about you, but I'm really not keen on going back down into those spider caves-"

"Who says he's down there?" Takeda challenged him. "Or that Sento's down there?" Jin rolled his eyes.

"You know it's a possibility. Don't be stupid!"

" _Shhhhhwhsorpsc . . ._ " It was just a jumble of words and sounds. He couldn't make sense of them anymore.

"He could also be somewhere in the graveyard, too! So we explore the graveyard!" Takeda said, gesturing wildly to their surroundings. "SHUT. UP!" He yelled at the souls.

They didn't listen.

"And if we do that when he's not up here, we waste time. Which means he dies, if he isn't dead already."

"Shut UP, Jin!"

"So pick your poison, I guess-"

"Okay, okay, enough!" Cassie yelled. "Enough! Both of you shut up!"

Takeda wasn't done. "Why do you have to be so dismissive of all this?!" he asked Jin. "So, what, we don't know where Sento is, so we just give up on the mausoleum and don't even look for it and for Kenshi? Is that what you're saying?"

"I'm not saying anything. Except that if anyone's in the mausoleum, it's going to be hard to find Kenshi, and therefore Sento, because we don't know where either is! Also, what if they're separated? What if Sento busted? What if Kenshi lost Sento or something?"

"That's impossible. He can call it wherever it is. It's telepathically connected to him-"

"Yeah, and? This place has some weird-ass rules. Like the technology, and the clocks or whatever. What if Kenshi can't use his powers here?"

"Jin, you're scaring me-" Jacqui said, in an attempt to end the argument.

"Oh, come on! You guys can't tell me you haven't thought about all these risks already!"

"Okay, then what about Lao, hm?" Takeda said, stepping closer to Jin. "Kung Lao and Liu Kang are both here! What if Liu Kang can't call his fire? What if Kung Lao's hat doesn't come back like a fuckin' boomerang? We GET it, Jin! Okay? We GET it! Excuse us for trying to think positively about the fact that our fathers, and Master Hanzo, are trapped in this hellhole!" He ended it himself, storming past Jin and past the mausoleum. Past stones shaped like the skeletons, and past new above-ground tombs. He was too angry to care if anyone was following him. He didn't want to look at Jin. "I'll find Kenshi, and Sento myself!" he yelled back. "Come along if you want! I really don't care! You can let Lao and Liu Kang die here if you want while I look."

"Yeah, fuck you, too!" Jin yelled to his back.

Takeda stormed through the path created by the stone fence, leading him down another narrow hallway. He turned a left, went straight, hung a right. He heard steps running behind him to keep up. Probably Jacqui. "Takeda, wait up!" Yup. It was Jacqui. "Please!" Made a right, and an immediate left, still fenced in the hallway. As he walked, he could feel the souls' presence in his mind growing weaker and weaker. And with each step, it was like another weight was lifted off of his heart. His eyebrow un-furrowed, it became easier to breathe. And by the time the white light faded to a dim yellow, he could barely remember why he was angry.

"I guess they do affect me," he muttered, once the last voice faded. Ugh, that was strange. He felt . . . oddly violated. Like for a second he had thought he was in control of himself and his anger, and was aware of everything. But they were inside of him, working their magic from the inside of him out. Before he could help himself he shuddered, pausing next to a stone archway arching above him - a carved stone archway, not a natural formation of the mountains around them. The broken, jagged, and falling-in bricks of the hallway suddenly smoothed out into two stone pillars. On the pillars were Mortal Kombat dragon reliefs, and the tops of the pillars were carved into turrets, reminiscent of a castle. The arch above it had simple flower-looking designs on it, but it was too dark to see. The torches inside were cemented into pillars of their own that jutted out into the walk-way, making it extremely narrow. Takeda waited for the others to catch up. It looked both threatening and welcoming at the same time. Like it was pretty and inviting and much nicer compared to the rest of the graveyard, but something sinister lay beyond it. He felt like there was something on the other side, and he wanted the others to be there with him to back him up in case there was.

Jacqui caught up and stood next to him, placing her hands on her hips. "Phew!" she said, eyeing up the archway. "Look at this! It's kinda nice!"

"Yeah," he said, "But it kinda weirds me out."

"This whole place weirds me out, so I can't say this does anything for me," Jacqui admitted. It took Jin and Cassie a few more seconds to catch up, and when they did, Takeda turned and faced them.

"Hey, Jin, I'm sorry," he said. "I know you don't mean you want to abandon Kenshi and Jax. And I don't want Kung Lao or Liu Kang to die, either. Sorry I said that. Those souls kinda made me irritable, I think."

Jin gave a single nod of ascent. "It's cool. Thanks for apologizing." His gaze traveled away from Takeda's face and up at the archway. "This is new."

"You think there's anything special about it?" Cassie asked. She craned her neck all around it, perhaps trying to find something off about it. A trap or something, Takeda thought.

"Nah, think it's just an archway," Jin said. "Why are we stopped?"

"I was just waiting for you guys." Takeda turned sideways to avoid being burned by the torches, and the four of them shimmied their way through the archway. He heard a deep breath, and when he turned around, he saw Jin holding his breath to make himself narrower in order to fit between the torches. Once on the other side, he let it out in a whoosh.

The hallway turned another right, and then a left. Another pair of torches marked the entranceway to a new section of graveyard, but a tree caught Takeda's attention. The tree was a gnarled mess of stunted limbs and charred dead bark, planted right in the corner. Something kept glinting in the flicker of the torchlight. Something metal. There was a thick patch of grass directly in front of the tree and soft, deep brown dirt, and a large knot on the tree that jutted grotesquely out at them.

"What is that?" Takeda asked to the air. He walked towards the tree, but when he hit the grass, it didn't rustle under his foot. It squished. He picked his foot up, and the mud dripped off his sandal back into the -

No. Not mud.

Blood. A puddle of blood.

So deep, it instantly coated his already wet socks and gummed thickly between his toes. A noise of disgust escaped him. He withdrew in horror, barreling straight into Jacqui right behind him.

"What? What?!" she prompted, grabbing his shoulder.

Cassie looked at the footprint he left in the snow. "Is that blood?"

All he could manage was a low "Uh-huh." She pulled her pistols from the holster on her back and cocked each one, slinking against the wall. She crept until she reached the turn, and she peeked around the corner, scoping out their surroundings for any enemies.

A few seconds of tense silence passed before she relaxed. "Well, nothing here." She walked up to the tree, choosing her steps carefully to avoid the puddle. "Gross!" she yelled. "Someone's _head_ is pinned to this tree!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here I am, with another update! Don't forget to leave a comment if you have the time!


	9. Chapter 9

"Someone's _head_ is pinned to this tree!" Cassie yelled.

Someone's head?

Takeda really didn't want to get any closer to it. His socks were wet, with blood. He just got attacked by residual souls guarding a probably-centuries old mausoleum. He was not in the mood. But his curiosity and mild horror wouldn't let him look away. Jin, Jacqui, and Cassie all inched closer and closer to it, and Takeda followed, afraid to be anywhere but right with them. They stopped a foot from it, dodging the puddle of blood to crowd on its left side. Upon closer inspection what he thought was a knot in the bark was actually a person's severed head. The glint he saw earlier was the weapon that pinned it to the tree. A blade of some sort. He couldn't see much of the blade since it was imbedded to the hilt in someone's forehead, but the decorative hilt was all he needed to see. He knew what it was, and the chain dangling from the end only made his heart drop into his stomach like a weight.

Master Hasashi's kunai.

"Hey," Jacqui said, patting his arm. "Isn't that Scorpion's?"

Takeda swallowed thickly, trying to quell the rising panic that curled in his stomach like a knot. "Yeah," he muttered. The heat from the blade had melted the tree around the head, dripping down with the blood into the puddle. The head itself looked like it belonged to a Japanese man, with his hair tied back into a small bun atop his head. His eyebrows were furrowed as if in frustration and his eyes were crossed, looking up at the kunai where it split his skull. Probably the last thing he ever saw before he died. The jaw hung open loosely, probably from gravity, but it looked like his mouth was locked open in a silent scream. Blood dripped in little trails from the wound, still dripping off the chin.

"This looks . . . recent," Cassie muttered. "The blood's still fresh. Takeda, is it warm?"

"Ugh!" Jacqui scoffed. "Gross, Cass!"

"What?" she asked, shrugging. "He stepped in it! If it's warm, that means Scorpion's around here!"

"It . . . uh . . . " he began. But every time he tried to start a sentence his eyes locked on the head and he lost his train of thought. Did this man attack Hanzo? How many other humans were still here? Were they all volatile? Did Hanzo get away? Was anyone else attacked, and did they get away with Hanzo? "It was, um . . . " If Hanzo was alive, he was weaponless.

"Hey! Focus," Cassie said, snapping her fingers in front of his eyes. He shook his head to clear it.

"Sorry. We just . . . I have a lot of questions. We have to find Hanzo. If he lost his swords too, he's weaponless, and who knows how many other attackers there could be?"

"Was the blood warm?" Cassie asked again. "He could be around here."

"Um . . . " he thought, trying to remember the sensation while his disgust simultaneously blocked it out. Instead, he picked up his foot and felt it, almost gagging at the though that this man's blood (potentially fresh) blood was now on his hand after seeping between his toes. "No, it's cold."

"Could be the snow, too," Jin said, crossing his arms. "Someone should touch it on his face and see if that's cold."

"No, Jin!" Jacqui yelled.

"Why are you guys so squeamish?" he asked. "Jacqui, I've seen you punch your entire fist through Outworlders' heads. Takeda, you've ripped your whips out of people's throats. What the hell is wrong with you?"

"This is . . . different," Jacqui said. "This guy . . . I don't know. To me there's a difference between killing someone who's trying to kill you and making sure they're dead, and just messing with a body that's already dead."

"Cassie?" Jin asked, turning towards her.

"You want me to touch it?"

"Yeah! Go over there and see if his blood's warm."

Her lips pursed and she frowned, eyes shooting past Jin to look at the face. "Rock, Paper, Scissors?" she asked, holding out her fist.

" _Rrgh_!" Jin growled, throwing his arms up. "You guys are such pussies." He stomped over to the head, getting as close as he could without stepping in the blood. He leaned over it, bracing his arm against the tree to hold himself upright. Jacqui shot him a glare and called him out.

"Hey! Don't yell at us when you won't even step in it!"

"We already tested that theory! There's no reason for me to get my socks wet with cold blood when it won't discover anything new."

Jacqui rolled her eyes, but didn't say anything. Jin turned his head this way and that, circling around the head like he was closely inspecting some small detail. He stuck his finger out and gently dabbed at one of the blood trails rolling towards his chin. Got a drop on his finger.

"It's lukewarm. Like it's cooling off-"

"That means it's recent!" Takeda said. "That means Master Hasashi's probably around here somewhere!" His excitement and relief soared in his chest, and it felt like a thousand weights were lifted off of his shoulders. "MASTER!" he yelled, as loud as he possibly could. Master Hasashi had to hear him. "MASTER HASASHI!"

" _Shhhh_!" Cassie hissed, waving her hand wildly. "Shut up! If any enemies are here they'll hear you!"

"But Master Hasashi's here!" he protested. "We have to find him! He'll need his kunai," he said. As sick as the head in the tree had made him before, his thoughts of Hanzo pushed all of it away. He grabbed the handle on the kunai and braced his other arm on the tree, ripping it out of the head with a wet sucking sound. The head tumbled down, hitting his shins before rolling face-down into the blood puddle, and Takeda coiled the chain around his arm. Before anybody could protest (and before he could think about protesting himself) he ran forward into the new section of the graveyard.

"Takeda, you asshole! Get back here!" Cassie said.

"MASTER HASASHI! Master Hasashi, are you there? Answer me!" The rocks and mountains that had enclosed them in all the previous sections finally reached their end, and for the first time, Takeda could see the sky and the moonlight. The white moonlight reflected off the snow and illuminated the entire area with a natural, high-visibility glow that comforted him in the wake of the yellow torchlight - that tended to only light a small area before leaving them to the mercy of whatever lay beyond the glare. He felt more free, he felt like he could breathe, and the trees surrounding the new section seemed to appreciate the lack of rocks as well. Takeda kept running - the tombs lined the perimeter of the rectangle, forming a wide walkway between them. Takeda ran to the end of it, pausing as the paths split in two different directions: straight ahead of him, and twisting hard to the left. "Crap," he muttered. "Hanzo!"

"Master Hasashi!" Jacqui yelled behind him. "Hello? Anybody?"

"Which way?" he asked. "Staight? To the left?"

"What if we split up?" Jacqui asked. "Jin and Cass go to the left, and we go straight?"

" . . . I don't want us to split up," Cassie said, finally coming up behind them in the snow. "Call me crazy, but this place is really starting to creep me out. I feel safer with all four of you."

"Come on, come on!" Takeda urged them. They had to find Hanzo, as quickly as possible. Clearly he was around here, but what if he was wounded? What if he couldn't answer and was bleeding out or something? "Which way?"

"Uuuuuh . . . " Cassie started, looking back and forth between the two paths. Suddenly, she perked up. "Wait. Look! I can see some red lights above the walls over there!" The others all followed her pointing finger.

"Where? I don't see them," Jin said, standing on his tiptoes. He craned his neck this way and that, trying to peer over the wall.

"It's, like, through the trees. Waaay over there."

It took Takeda a moment too, but sure enough he could see red reflections through the gnarly tree branches. They were blurry, like he couldn't look directly at them, but he didn't question it. He couldn't bother to. They needed to find Hanzo.

"Maybe he burned some other stuff. Let's go!" Takeda said. He didn't wait for them again. He took off on the straight path, jumping over fallen bricks and overgrown thorn bushes. The snow and wind whipped around him and burned uncomfortably in his eyes and they watered, blurring the path in front of him. He pushed on. He had to find Hanzo - it was a matter of life and death-

He almost stumbled and reconsidered at the thought of it: death. What if Master Hasashi was dead? What if Takeda was about to find him dead? A disturbing mental image of Master Hasashi, face down in the snow, popped into his head without warning. Takeda flipping him over, his face covered with dirt and maggots and-

No! No, he's not dead, Takeda yelled at himself. Don't think like that!

The path only curved once, then immediately curved back in the same direction as before. And when it opened up into a tiny courtyard, Takeda saw the source of the lights. Red, glowing runes etched in black stone. An inner stone ring circled around like a doorway, but the only thing on the other side was snow and the low wall closing him in. Nothing. Just an empty archway.

And no Hanzo.

Good, or bad? Alive somewhere else, or dead somewhere else?

"Hanzo!" Takeda yelled. "Master Hasashi, where are you?"

On the ground in front of the archway sat a stone slab with the orange Mortal Kombat dragon etched in to it. Takeda gave in to his impulse to step on it, hoping it would activate whatever this was in front of him. A portal, maybe? The dragon slab didn't depress or move or respond in any way, and the archway remained dead before him. His heart sank into his stomach, and he turned back around, expecting the others to be right there.

They weren't there, either.

Brief, blind panic tightened in his chest. Where are they? "Guys?!"

"Over here, Takeda," Jacqui answered. She was close. God, that was a relief. He followed the path back out. Jin, Cass, and Jacqui were crowded around a recession in the stone. It was like . . . a pocket of cold. Disconnected from the rest of the world. Layer after layer after layer of thick, solid ice completely covered the ground, rising up several inches, even. The plants were completely dead and half blown-back, also frozen where they were in ice. Cold steam puffed out and wafted gently into the air, and the ice in the center rose into four dangerous looking spikes. Like pillars, holding up the source in the middle. The cold was biting and immediate, and Takeda found himself shivering before he could even register what he was looking at.

A ball of ice. Sheer, glowing blue ice.

"Aaaaaand that's Sub-Zero's," Cassie said. "What the hell?"

"What even . . . is this?" Jacqui asked. "Does Sub-Zero's ice usually do that? Just ball up like this and sit here?"

"Nnnnno," Cassie said. "I don't remember that happening when we fought him. What the hell is going on?"

"Hanzo's weapon. Sub-Zero's 'weapon'," Jin said. "I'm thinking they were attacked. And I'm thinking it was by humans if we look at the head back there. Hanzo and Sub-Zero probably held off an attack here. They were probably out-numbered, and weaponless. So they bolted."

"You think?" Takeda asked. "You think they bolted?" Meaning you don't think they're dead? he asked Jin silently.

Jin shook his head. "I . . . don't think they're dead. If this was their final stand, where are the bodies? Their bodies, or the bodies of anybody they killed? I betcha they ran. They're probably safe somewhere . . . " Jin's tone was weak. It sounded like he didn't even believe himself. He grabbed the excess fabric from his sash and rolled it around his hand so he could reach out and snatch Sub-Zero's ice ball. He tucked it into a pouch on his belt.

"Can we please keep looking?" Takeda asked. "We have to find-"

" _SHH_!" Cassie hissed. " _Shh_ , _shh_!" She held her hand out, palm down, as if to calm them down further. The four of them froze. "Hear that?" she whispered.

Softly at first. A gentle pat-PAT! pat-PAT! pat-PAT! pat-PATpat-PATpat-PATPAT-PAT _PAT-PATPAT-PAT-_


	10. Chapter 10

Pat-PAT! pat-PAT! pat-PAT! pat-PATpat-PATpat-PAT _PAT-PATPAT-PATPAT-PAT-_

What is that, _what is that?_ Takeda couldn't pinpoint the sound. It sounded like it was all around him, everywhere at once. An army, running through the snow from behind the cement bricks. Takeda's breath hitched in his throat, and his heart pounded against his ribcage, threatening to pulse through at any moment. His breath couldn't come fast enough, couldn't fill his lungs hard enough. He circled and circled. Where is it?

There was protocol for this. Ingrained in Takeda by Master Hanzo and the Shirai Ryu over and over and over again. Identify the threat. Assess its strengths, its weaknesses, and how to exploit both. Engage. Regroup.

Takeda didn't even have time to identify where it was coming from. It was already too loud, too close, and getting closer too quickly. He didn't even have time to guess what it could possibly be. A second later, a snarling brown mass launched itself over the low brick wall, over the ice-inlet, and flew past Takeda's shoulder - so close to him that flecks of spit and fur brushed against his face. A cry of surprise left his throat and he ducked away from it on reflex, right as it slammed into Jin's chest and tackled him to the ground. They rolled to a stop, and Takeda got a look at the writhing, snarling wolf on top of Jin. About the size of a small bear, it had slick brown fur gummed with blood, and glowing yellow eyes, like a hound straight out of Netherrealm hell. It reared its head back to snap its jaws down on Jin's face, and he barely slid his arm in the way. He jammed it into the wolf's throat, barring its jaws from his face and holding it off of him as it twisted on top of him.

Cassie ran forward and planted her foot into the wolf's side, shoving it off of Jin so hard it briefly went airborne. It landed on its back, squealing in pain, and scrambled to its feet. It skittered on its legs for a moment, as though it was taking stock of its injuries, and Takeda vainly hoped it would turn and run. Instead, it decided it was fine. It turned on Cassie next, inching close and closer to her with its lips curled back over its teeth. It snarled so low in its throat, it was more like a roar, flaring its eyes and baring its teeth over and over in a challenge.

Cassie met its stare, cooly cocking one of her pistols. The wolf almost attacked at the action, but Cassie cooly shot at its feet, and it bolted in the other direction. They watched it go, not daring to look away until it turned the corner past the mausoleum. It looked back once, howled, and ran out of sight. "Circle up!" Cassie yelled. "There could be more!"

"No, no! Let's move!" Jin said, crawling to his feet. "If there are more, I don't want to be cornered here!"

"Where the _fuck_ did they come from?!" Cassie yelled. "There are rocks all around here! Like mountains-"

A cluster of howls reached them, extremely quiet and distant, but still they all froze in momentary panic, fists and weapons up, listening intently. Jin relaxed first, groaning and rubbing his chest where the wolf hit him. "They're far off. Way far off. We're okay for now."

"You good?" Takeda asked him, sounding breathless. He couldn't help it. His heart was still pounding in his throat, so hard his vision pulsed with it.

"I'm good. Got scratched a bit, but I'm fine." He pulled the flaps of his vest apart and revealed a thin red line on his chest. "Didn't even break the skin. Knocked the wind out of me, though." He raised his bow over his head and took as deep a breath as he could, but Takeda saw a grimace flash across his face, and saw him curl back up despite trying to hide it as best he could.

"Those howls were a response, weren't they? To the first one?" Jacqui asked. "Don't wolves do that?"

"Maybe," Jin shrugged. "But they're far off, now. We should still move. I'm not a fan of getting cornered by more of them." He lead the way away from the empty archway and away from Sub-Zero's ice-pocket. Back in the open air, Jin hung a right. He pointed back over to the mausoleum. "The wolf ran that way, right? Somebody watch our back and make sure it doesn't decide to come back."

"I got it," Jacqui said, moving to the back of the group.

"Okay, seriously? Where did they come from?" Cassie asked. The mountains and rocks and shit circle this entire place, but unless they learned how to climb-"

"Wolves can climb, Cass," Jin sneered like it was obvious. "Especially hellhounds from the Netherrealm. Did you see the eyes? They were glowing yellow."

The conversation lulled, and they all let it, starting down the other path. They passed three more tombs that outlined the area before hanging a right. The path narrowed and closed in on them once again, and Jin paused at the entrance. "Damn. So much for staying in the open."

"What do we do?" Jacqui asked, still facing the rear in case the wolf came back.

"We gotta continue," Jin said. "We have no idea what's beyond here. We could find somebody."

Takeda realized he nearly forgot about Master Hasashi. There were attackers here, there were wolves here . . . the odds of Hanzo escaping, especially without his kunai, were getting slimmer and slimmer with each encounter in this place. It made Takeda's heart sick. He didn't want to think about Hanzo being attacked or killed, or being ripped apart by wolves. He didn't want to think about Jax like that either, or Kenshi, or anybody that was here. He just wanted to find them and get out as quickly as possible.

He glanced down the path they wanted to go down, watching as the darkness intensified only a few steps in. He stared and stared, not understanding how that was possible until he realized that the rocks and mountains he thought had ended had actually circled around surrounding the low cement wall, rising above them. They squeezed it in, making it look even narrower and darker.

"We have to go. We can't just wait here," Takeda said. He held up Master Hasashi's kunai. "We still gotta find Master Hanzo-"

" . . . woooOOOOOOooo . . . " The howling reached them again, on the wind.

It was getting closer.

"Okay, let's go!" Cassie said. "We have to get somewhere where it's open." She pushed to the front of the group and took a few cautious steps into the darkness. "We still have that glow stick? It's really dark here."

"Yeah, I got it," Takeda said. Cassie had given it back to him after they left the spider caves. He pulled it from a loop in his belt and handed it to her. Cassie held it straight out with her left hand and held her gun out with her right hand, and half-ran, half-walked down the length of the tunnel - yeah, that's what it was, Takeda realized. A tunnel. They followed behind Cassie, into the darkness that felt tangible. When Takeda crossed the overhang the dark pressed itself to his back, pushing and bothering. his back twitched against it, and he shuddered despite himself, subconsciously edging closer and closer to the dim, orange light.

He remembered something his mother told him, when he was little and still living with her in Thailand. Every day, when she was finished with her factory job in the evening, she would come by the school where he waited all day, and together the two of them would walk home. First through the city, then through the mountains and jungles to their cottage. Every day, he tried to pretend he wasn't afraid, for his mother. He tried to pretend that the footsteps he thought he heard behind him weren't frightening him, or that the breezes through the trees didn't sound like whispers. He aways thought he had her fooled. Perhaps she let him think he had her fooled. His quick breath, his fists clenching at his side and squeezing her hand probably gave him away. "Don't look back Takeda," she would tell him. "They can't touch you. They're lost spirits and lost souls, and since you're not from their world, they can't touch you. Unless you look back. If you look back, you cross over."

" _Don't look back, Takeda, don't look back_ ," he told himself, over and over again. In some ways it brought him a sick form of comfort so he latched on to it for a moment. " _Don't look back. They're lost spirits, they're lost souls. They can't touch you. Don't look back._ "

The howling started back up again, definitely closer, and it didn't stop. It sounded like a lot of wolves were gathering, and they were all crying at once. Jacqui bristled in discomfort. "Those wolves are coming, guys, and they're coming really fast. We have to get out of this tunnel, now!"

"I'm going as fast as I can! Can you maybe chill?" Cassie yelled.

"No! They're getting closer and closer to us! At this pace, they'll be on top of us!"

"We are going through a tunnel right now!"

Despite arguing, Cassie did pick up the pace. " _Don't look back. Don't look back_. Don't look back, Jacqui."

"What?"

"Something my mother told me. Don't look-"

" _RRRRRRRrrrrrrrrr_!"

Jacqui gasped, spinning around and putting up her fists despite his warning. He looked back, too. He had to. The shadow of a wolf turned the corner at the end of the tunnel, back-lit by the moon and the white snow, and its glowing eyes narrowed at the sight of them. It growled, and the sound echoed and echoed through the tunnel, reverberating and amplifying the sound. It barked out a sound. Probably a warning, Takeda realized, and the dread sank in his stomach. Cassie's gloved hand grabbed Takeda's wrist.

"Start backing away. Slowly," she whispered. "Don't make sudden movements."

He didn't even have a chance to before the wolf charged. All the other wolves, alerted by the warning, followed the pack leader, spilling in from everywhere. Over the walls, from the left of the entrance and from the right of the entrance. Snarling, growling, closing in. Like a tidal wave of brown fur. Eight, or maybe ten. Maybe twelve.

Cassie spun on her heels, dragging Takeda around with her. "Run!" She let go of him to pull her pistol, and fired blindly over Takeda's shoulder. With every pump of her arms while they ran, the dim glowlight strobed dizzily around them. Every so often, Takeda caught a glimpse of the wolf's shadow, bigger and smaller, bigger and smaller. The growling of wolves echoed and echoed, screaming in his ears. Getting closer and closer.

Cassie stopped suddenly, and Takeda slammed into her back, shoving her into whatever stopped them. A wall. There was a curve in the tunnel. They turned a left, and only went a few steps before the tunnel curved back again. Cassie turned around and shot at the wolves again. She must have hit one, because there was a loud yelp that echoed through the tunnel. The others paused for a moment- at least, Takeda assumed they did. There was a split second where all the growling and howling stopped in the tunnel.

"Let's go!" Cassie yelled, hauling Takeda along. Jacqui wasn't behind him anymore. He looked around frantically for her. "Wait, Cass! Where's Jacqui!"

"I'm up here! Just come on!"

The tunnel hung two sharp lefts, seeming to double back on itself. When it straightened back out, a feeble white light glowed at the end of the tunnel. The proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. Takeda coulda have yelled in delight if the wolves didn't begin their trek to them again. Their paws crunched in the snow behind them again and as much as he wanted to look back, he knew if he did he would only slow himself down. Instead, he let Cassie lead him along towards the light.

"Go, go, go!" Jin yelled. Snarling, getting closer and closer and closer. P _at-PAT! Pat-PAT! Pat-PAT-patPAT-patPAT-_

Takeda felt warmth against his calves. They were so close-

The four of them spilled out of the tunnel, right as a wolf dove on Takeda and tackled him to the ground. It scratched and chomped at the back of his neck, but Takeda rolled and landed on top of the wolf. He threw elbow after elbow behind him until he hit something sensitive. The wolf let him go, and Jacqui took a couple punches at it.

Takeda scrambled to his feet. The other wolves were coming. Their shadows were nearing the end of the tunnel. They'd be overrun if they managed to make it through. Takeda pulled a plasma bomb from his belt and activated it, rearing back and hurling it as hard as he could into the tunnel. It exploded with a flash of orange, and the blow was so powerful it knocked all four of them back into the snow. Takeda recovered and sat up, ready to engage whatever else came out of the tunnel, but as the smoke cleared, no more wolves spilled from the tunnel. No more growls echoed through, no more paws hit the snow. The bomb took care of them. Bits of brown fur and chunks of flesh peppered the snow around the tunnel's opening.

"They're dead," Takeda said, collapsing back into the snow. Only a few seconds had gone by since they entered the tunnel, but it already felt like a lifetime. "Woah . . . "

Cassie checked the bullets she had left. "Shit . . . Everyone okay?"

Takeda held up an admittedly shaky thumbs up. Jin and Jacqui both said yes.

"Okay," she said. "I think . . . we are severely underestimating this place."

"This place doesn't make sense!" Jin yelled. "The snow's not even cold. Snow! What kind of a place - and the tech! Then the head was there, pinned to the tree, but there are no signs of human life anywhere! Not from that guy or any of his friends, not even from Hanzo and them! If Hanzo had fought someone off, there'd be signs of a battle."

"This is the fucking Netherrealm, Jin! Did you expect it to make sense?" Jacqui cried. "We gotta be more careful, because this place doesn't fuck around. We've got wolves, we've got a wall of souls guarding a mausoleum, we've got graveyards with fresh graves, we've got spiders . . . "

"I hate this place," Cassie finished for her.

"Ditto."

" . . . We still have about twenty minutes before it's time to rest for three hours. What do you guys want to do?" Jin asked. "Make camp now? Or keep going for twenty minutes?"

Takeda looked around to all of them, panting, dirty, just as exhausted as he was. And scared. They all looked just as scared as he did. "Make camp," he sent to all of them. He didn't want to say it out loud. He was shaking from the adrenaline. "Let's make camp. We need to regroup, and come up with a game plan."

"Yeah, I agree," Jacqui said, nodding in Takeda's direction.

"Me too," Cassie said. She paused, looking around their small area. It looked like any other section of the graveyard. Just a square section, with gnarled trees and overgrown dead bushes and berries and low stone walls and high rocks behind them. "The graveyard ends over there, it looks like. There's something over there, a really tall building or something, but let's explore it later."

Takeda arched his head back and looked at the rest of the graveyard upside down. He did see a structure and a glowing white symbol on it, but even thinking about it and trying to guess what the next fucked up thing they'd see would be exhausted him.

"It's Shaolin," Jin said. "That's a White Lotus, glowing at the top. Yeah, we can explore it later. Let's make camp here."

Wow. Jin must have been tired. He was so interested in the Shaolin, always eager to learn about them and explore the history and heritage of his faction. Him passing it up was telling.

The four of them set their packs down and started unloading their supplies. "This is a good spot," Cassie said. "We can use this tree right here for a center." While they were unloading, Takeda heard sloshing inside his pack, and realized he forgot about his canteen this whole time.

"Oh, shoot," he said. "Everybody make sure you drink water." As soon as he said it he became painfully aware of how dry and cracked his throat felt. All the excitement . . . he forgot about almost all of the necessities. Like all the training he did, for years and years, of survival and fighting meant nothing.

"Good call," Jin said, helping himself to his own. Cassie and Jacqui copied the two of them, and as soon as they were all hydrated, Cassie took control again, handing out orders. "Takeda, you start clearing this area of debris and other shit. Jin, gather anything we can use to make a fire pit. Jacqui, gather anything we can use for firewood and tinder. You know what to look for."

"Yup. Anything dry and brittle for tinder, thick for long burn time, and wet leaves for smoke."

"Uh-huh. I'll roll out our bed rolls and get some of the cans ready. Do we even want to eat?"

It was an honest question, but the way she asked it made it seem like she was saying, 'I'm a little too spooked to eat.' Takeda quickly looked into her face to try and see if that was what she meant, but she looked no different than any other time. If Takeda was being honest with himself, he really didn't want to eat. The excitement, and the dread that knotted his stomach while the wolves were chasing them made him lose a lot of his appetite. But, the survival instinct that seemed to be coming back during their down time told him that not eating was a very, very poor decision. "I want to eat," he said. "Start a can of whatever you think is good," he said. He dragged himself to his feet and started his task, moving all the little twigs that could be hard to sleep or rest on around the tree.

Before long, they had three sleeping bags arranged around a tiny fire that Jacqui managed to light. "No tents?" Jin asked Cassie after a while.

"No tents. It's only for three hours. If we decide to sleep for longer, then we'll set up tents. Then again, that's only if we sleep in the graveyard. If we find a way into the mausoleum, that'll provide cover. Same with the spider caves."

Oh, man. They'd have to eventually go down there, wouldn't they?

Takeda didn't want to think about it. "Who's taking first watch?"

"I am," Cassie said, without hesitation. "You guys chill out for a bit. In three hours, we'll keep exploring this shit hole."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And another chapter finally!!
> 
> Please leave a comment if you have time!! :)


	11. Chapter 11

No wolves.

No people.

For once, their little pocket of graveyard felt some shred of safe.

Safe enough. Takeda resolved he would never feel totally safe in this hell-space, but it felt safe enough. Cassie was set to take the watch, with her back planted against the tree. Facing the tunnel with a cocked pistol in each hand, so Takeda allowed himself to collapse on top of his sleeping bag and sprawl out. Jacqui had already started and fed the fire, while Jin had pulled the map paper out of his bag to keep drawing.

With nothing for Takeda to do but try and relax, the rest of his adrenaline drained out of his systems quickly. The fine details and the textures of the graveyard blurred with his dulling senses, and exhaustion crashed down over him like a wave. It weighed down his limbs and his chest and even his eyelids, making sleep nearly inevitable. He didn't want the adrenaline to leave. He wanted to keep his heightened awareness. He wanted to keep his quickened reflexes, and his sense of danger. Instead, they abandoned him, and left him with nothing except a ridiculous desire to sleep and never wake up.

"Whatcha doin', Jin?" Jacqui asked, and Takeda used the conversation to peel his eyes open and watch them.

"Updating. Starting with the map." He unfolded the nearly blank paper and spread it across the snow.

"It's gonna get wet," Cassie warned him.

"Nah, map paper's different. Anyway," Jin said, stooping low over the paper. "Last I updated was . . . like, the second section in. It was an 'L' shape," he said, tracing over the lines he already drew to make them darker. "Then, there was a rock overhang, and it turned to the rrrrrrrright," he settled on, thinking through it to make sure he was correct. He started to draw the path to the next section, the section with the mausoleum, but Takeda stopped him.

"Oh yeah, there was a set of stairs in the 'L' section," Takeda said. "They just went up and turned a right into a dead-end courtyard. Like, on the arm of the 'L'."

"Oh, really?" Jin asked. "Must have missed those."

"Yeah, me and Cassie went up there."

"What was in there?" Jacqui asked him.

"Just a statue, from what we could tell, but it was gated shut." Takeda figured that was his addition to the map, so he closed his eyes again and tried to fall asleep.

"Okay. I'll draw the stairs and the courtyard. It might be a good idea to designate all these areas, too. In case we get lost, we can say, 'Rendezvous in the "L"', know what I mean?"

"Yeah, that's a good idea," Cassie said from her spot.

"Okay. The place where we first entered - that little courtyard place - that'll be The Gate. Any opposition?" Everybody shook their heads. "Then, the first area of graves will be . . . "

"Boneland," Jacqui suggested. Jin snickered in reply, and Jacqui glared back. "What? You have a better idea? I'm just trying to be original, and we need to make sure we don't have any of the areas confused."

"Alright, alright! Boneland it is. Next section will be the 'L'," Jin said, writing the label down in the center. "I'll call the statue courtyard the Statue Courtyard. Simple."

"Next section was the mausoleum. That's pretty self-explanatory," Takeda said. Those souls, all those souls. Attacking his senses. Screaming in his ears and blurring his eyes and shutting down his body. He shuddered against the memory of it, afraid that if he thought about it for too long it could happen again.

"Right. The Mausoleum. Then . . . "

"That little archway can be The Archway," Cassie said.

"Cool. The Archway. Maybe when this is all over, we can come up with more poetic names, but these work for now. After that was . . . kind of that open area where we found Scorpion's weapon, and where we were attacked the first time. We'll call that . . . Takeda?" Jin asked, deferring to him.

Obviously he was trying to be nice, considering how much finding Master Hasashi's weapons had affected him, but Takeda was caught off-guard by the question. He didn't want to name the area. It felt strange to him to invest that much time and energy into naming the place that had stolen everyone dear to him, especially when their goal was to get out as quickly as possible. Plus, he was completely exhausted. His creativity was not at peak performance.

"Umm . . . " he trailed off, trying to think. He shrugged. "I don't know. Call it whatever."

"Let's name the two paths first. We'll call the straight one the Ice Path, since we found Sub-Zero's ice there, and we'll call the other pathway The Tunnel." He paused. "The area itself can be Wolfland," he muttered bitterly, rubbing the scratch from where the first wolf attacked him.

"Oh!" Cassie yelled. "We should call that first area Spider Hell since the entrance to the spider caves is there!"

"Hah! Spider hell," Takeda chuckled. That was totally what it was.

"See, I thought about doing the spiders," Jin said, "but when we actually go down there, I have to make another map. I think we need to reserve 'Hell' for a room down there."

"That's fair," she replied.

"Then, after the tunnel, is the Shaolin Temple. I'll draw it tomorrow - well, in three hours," Jin said. "I hope that lack of time thing isn't gonna fuck us up when we get back."

"If we're not fucked up in  _some_  way when we get back, I'll honestly be amazed," Cassie said. "I betcha the time thing is going to be the icing on top of a very tall, very gross cake. Honestly, fuck this place."

"Yeah . . . Well, that's the map!" Jin said, folding all the paper back up. He switched back to the book, flipping a few pages in. He wrote the word, 'BESTIARY' at the top and underlined it. "Now for enemies. Start with the wolves, which I'm officially dubbing Netherrealm Hell Hounds. 'Large, bear-sized wolf. Glowing red eyes and sharp claws. Extremely violent. Will attack on-sight.' Then we've got Spiders from Hell-"

"Is that their official name?" Jacqui joked.

Takeda was already starting to tune them out. Or, rather, they were fading out as he sank closer and closer to sleep. He closed his eyes again, listening to their gentle back-and-forth.

Someone grabbed his arm and shook him - hard. "Takeda! Wake up!"

Oh, gods, they were under attack! Takeda's eyes shot open, and he shot to a sitting position, fists already up and ready to fight whatever was around them. Wolves, people, spiders-

"Woah, woah! We're alright!" He looked, and saw Jacqui leaning over him. "It's alright, calm down. It's been three hours. We're gonna move."

. . . Oh. Geez, that was scary for a minute. Takeda dropped his fists and sighed, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and resisting the urge to flop back down. A tiny pillar of smoke told him that Jacqui had already deadened the fire, and Jin and Cassie already had most of camp packed back up.

"Did you guys sleep at all?" he asked her.

"Yeah, I did. I don't know about Jin. You slept for, like, two and a half hours."

He didn't feel like he had been asleep for that long. It felt like seconds, like a blink. He supposed it was a good thing that he woke up with a start, though. It definitely killed all of the drowsiness in his body. Takeda flipped to his knees and started rolling his sleeping bag as tight as it could go, and packing up the rest of his stuff. He checked and made sure he had the extra wheels in case his whips broke, and his portion of the food.

"I slept for, like, an hour," Jin said. "We didn't have any trouble at all."

"That's good," Takeda replied. What all were they going to do next? They still had a small bit of the graveyard to explore, then . . . "We're heading into Spider Hell, then?"

"Yeah. After we explore the graveyard, there's nowhere else for us to go. We have to," Cassie said. "We just need to do a perimeter here, from what it looks like, and then the Lotus Temple's in the back."

"Well, I'm headed there," Jin said, and immediately set out, crunching over the snow. "Someone come with me."

"I'm on it," Takeda said, following after him. If his only other option was scope the perimeter and comb the graves, he'd rather explore the Temple with Jin. He really didn't want to be reminded of everything that seemed weird about them - the stones, and the dirt, and the snow. At least, Takeda noted, Jin's enthusiasm for the history of the Shaolin was back. Jin was probably feeling refreshed after their rest. It was sort of comforting that he wasn't too scared.

Or at least, wasn't letting on how scared he really was.

He wanted to read Jin, and find out what was on his mind while they walked up to the Temple, but he knew Jin wouldn't appreciate that, so he kept his powers to himself. Maybe that was another thing about this place. Anywhere else there were always crowds, always people to read. Like constant chatter in his mind, unless he set up his own walls. Here, he had his team. That was it, and they rarely liked being read without their permission. This place was too quiet, both in the physical world and in the psychic world. The spiritual world was alive like wildfire, but every experience Takeda had in trying to open up to it was a poor experience.

What was once a path up to the Temple was long-since worn away by snow, overgrown grass, and the other elements of this place. Takeda could tell it used to be a path, though, because the stones were arranged on either side of it. The tombstones around them generally looked the same as the first few sections. There were Mortal Kombat dragons, there were lotus flowers, there were hands and skulls, like before. Some were even edged on the wall that enclosed the area. The Temple itself loomed tall and proud over them. It carried a sort of serene beauty that was out of place in this weird realm. A sharp contrast to the mausoleum, which seemed to threaten passersby and suck all blackness deeper into itself.

The set of stone steps that led up to the Temple were simply carved out of the rocks, and they inclined steeply. Slick with ice that only seemed to get thicker the closer they grew to the Temple. The actual building was plain brick. It had a low-standing entranceway past a stone arch, and two torches marking either side of it. The building behind it looked tiered, with columns at different points along it like a castle. The white lotus window glowed white right in the middle of the bricks. Overall, a majestic building. It suited the White Lotus society, and the Shaolin, based on what Takeda knew about both.

The two of them stumbled and slipped up the steep steps. Takeda watched his footing so closely, he didn't realize Jin had stopped until his forehead and nose smashed into Jin's back. He knocked the both of them off-balance, and Takeda's feet slid out from under him. He and Jin flailed for a terrifying moment, caught somewhere between steadying each other and saving themselves, until finally, they both stopped moving.

"Thanks," Jin grumbled irritably.

"Why'd you stop?" Takeda yelled back.

"Uuuuh," Jin trailed, gesturing wildly to the Temple. Takeda rolled his eyes, but looked anyway.

Stretched the entire width of the three-foot wide archway and set about a foot and a half into the vestibule area was a thick sheet of ice. Just looking at it, Takeda could tell there was something off and supernatural about it. Spikes rose up around it just like around Sub-Zero's ice ball. It was so thick, it was almost white, and wisps of cold air pooled off of it. Frost even spread to the outside bricks of the Temple.

" . . . Oh," Takeda said, unsure of what else to say. "The hell is this?" He inched close to it and could feel the cold emanating off of it on his face. His breath frosted from his mouth, too. Takeda pressed his hands flat against the ice and tried to push it. To crack it or something, but it didn't cave at all. It didn't even sound like it was shifting. He knocked on it next, and it sounded and felt like he was knocking on stone.

"Don't even try it," Jin sighed. "I don't know what it is, but there's no way that ice that thick is natural. It's magic, or something."

"Is ice normal for the Shaolin?"

" . . . I . . . I don't . . . think so," Jin said.

"So what do we do?" Takeda turned back to him, and saw his eyebrows deeply furrowed. Obviously deep in thought. Despite what Takeda said earlier, he gently scanned Jin's mind to see if he could pick up on his thoughts.

" . . .  _gotta see what's in there. How are we supposed to get through that? Shaolin never use ice, we use the Dragon's Fire. So why would ice be here? That doesn't make sense. The only people who use ice are the Lin_ -Wait!" Jin shouted out loud. "Sub-Zero!" He ran forward and pushed past Takeda, flattening him against the wall of the entranceway. "Move!" he said, grabbing his shoulder. He pushed him back behind him and out into the open air, and once again Takeda almost wiped out on the ice and snow.

Jin switched his hands to the top and bottom of his staff and brought it up over his shoulder, driving the end into the ice. The tip glanced harmlessly off of it, not even scratching it.

"Who else wields ice like this but Sub-Zero?!" Jin said frantically. "He probably barricaded himself and the others in here!"

Hanzo could be in there. Or Kenshi. Galvanized into action, Takeda ran forward to help, but the area was too small for the both of them. Especially with Jin waving his staff around. He drove it down into the ice again, and once again, didn't do a shred of damage. He grunted with each effort, throwing all his force into it, but the ice was unyielding.

"Jin, you're not gonna break it! It's too thick!" Takeda tried. He watched Jin struggle until his grunts turned into growls of frustration. "You'll break your staff before you get through." That seemed to make him pause. Jin wiped the beads of sweat from his brow and rested the end of his staff on the ground. He tried instead to shout through the ice.

"Sub-Zero! Sub-Zero, can you hear me?! Hello? Liu Kang! Lao!"

They waited.

One second.

Two seconds.

Nothing.

"Hanzo!" Takeda yelled. "Master Hasashi?! Dad!"

"Try to read through it."

Takeda called his power and sent out a pulse like a sonar, through the ice and around the Temple to pick up on any presences that he could read. Behind him, he sensed Jin, Cassie and Jacqui, but blocked their essences from his awareness in case he confused them with anyone in the Temple. His power was sent towards the ice, but like a magnet it arced around it and glanced off of the walls of the Temple.

The ice was blocking him.

" _Rrgh_!" he growled. "I hate this place! The stupid  _ice_! I can't get through!"

"Then maybe nobody's in there-"

"Not ten seconds ago you were about to bust your weapon to get through! I can't  _tell_  if anybody's in there because my power can't get through the ice!"

"Try to move it! Try to move the ice!" Jin said.

"I'm telepathic, not telekinetic. It's Kenshi who can move stuff this big."

They both paused, staring down the ice. Despite being unable to get through, Takeda prayed, with all of him, that Kenshi and Hanzo were in there. It would be such a relief, and much easier to handle this place if they at least knew where everyone was and just had to find a way to get in there.

Takeda saw an idea spark in Jin's eyes, and he gently tapped his staff off the ground. The little pearl in the dragon's mouth turned red with fire energy, and a column of fire spilled from the its mouth. Jin started waving it all over the ice. They waited for a minute or two, but when Jin pulled the fire away the ice hadn't even started to drip. The fire didn't make a dent in it.

"What?!" he yelled. "Do you have any bombs?"

"Yeah, I've got a couple," Takeda said. Luckily, he remembered to bring his plasma kunai with him. He pulled three of the small explosive knives from his belt and Jin held out his hand to take them, but Takeda shook his head. "You have to throw them. Back out of there." The two of them inched out into the open, and Takeda flayed the handles between three fingers. He pulled back, arm poised by his ear for a backhand swipe, but a quick glance at the structure of the building and the entranceway made him hesitate. He paused and lowered his hand.

"What? Let's go!" Jin urged.

"Wait. I can't detonate these. What if we bring down the entranceway? Then we'll never get inside." And Hanzo and Kenshi and Sub-Zero and whoever else was in there could never get out, either.

"They're small kunai!" Jin yelled incredulously. "The bombs aren't that powerful, are they?"

"Yeah! In a contained space they're powerful enough to bring down this whole building. Didn't you see what it did to the wall in the Special Forces' barracks? It blew a hole in there. Through the cinderblock on both walls."

Jin frowned back at him, clearly wanting to fight, but he could tell Takeda was right. "Fine, then. We'll have Cassie shoot at it, or something."

"Your staff couldn't make a dent! What makes you think-"

"Do you want to get them out of there, or not?" Jin walked back up to the ice. "SUB-ZERO!" he yelled as loud as he could. "Sub-Zero! Are you there? We're going to get you out of there! Just hold on!"

No answer.

He shoved past Takeda again. "Jin," he said, grabbing his arm. "We're not gonna get through that ice."

"I know, okay?! I don't have any other ideas! Except the fire. We-" he started, then cut himself off.

"What?" Takeda asked.

"I don't know," he said, suddenly sullen. "We won't get in there by ourselves. Honestly, I think we need the Dragon's Fire, but we don't have it."

"You tried your staff on it already-"

"No! Like, the  _Dragon's Fire_ ," Jin emphasized, slashing each word into the air with his hand, "that Liu Kang carries in his body. You know how Liu Kang can summon fire to his fists when he fights? And the huge dragon of fire that he can call?"

"I mean, I didn't know about the  _dragon_ , but okay-"

"The Shaolin, upon induction, are granted a portion of the Dragon's Fire. That's what you see in my staff: a small portion. The Dragon, if it deems a Shaolin worthy, may grant a large portion of its power in a special and ritualistic ceremony. Then, when the Shaolin dies, the power returns to the Dragon and lies dormant until the Dragon deems another Shaolin worthy to carry and wield the power. Since Liu Kang was the Grand Champion of Mortal Kombat, he was graced with the Dragon's Fire."

"So, in other words, we need Liu Kang."

Jin nodded. "We need Liu Kang."

"We're stuck," Takeda said. Stuck in the graveyard, stuck in this realm, stuck without technological or military aid. Stuck. With Master Hasashi and Kenshi and Jax and Raiden and everybody. "Jacqui," he thought to her, sending it out for her to hear.

" _What's up_?"

" _The Temple's blocked by a sheet of ice. We can't get through it._ "

" _Ice?!_ " she shot back. " _Sub-Zero, then_!"

" _Maybe_ ," he answered quickly. " _We don't know. I can't scan for any presences because my power can't get through it. It's supernatural. Jin thinks we need the Shaolin Dragon's Fire to bust through_."

" _I'll tell Cassie_."

"Come on, Jin, let's regroup."

They left the Temple entranceway and inched back down the steps, careful to avoid falling. When they got to the bottom, they caught up with Cassie and Jacqui, waiting right beside the steps.

"Is anybody else confused as fuck?" Cassie asked, before anyone else had the chance to say anything. "This doesn't make any sense. It's stupid for Sub-Zero to close himself in there, but not leave any sort of way to get out, first of all. Second of all, that's, like, the second time we've seen something like that. First, we need Kenshi and Sento to get into the mausoleum. Now we need Liu Kang and the Dragon's Fire to get into the Temple. We have Scorpion's kunai, but no Scorpion. We have Sub-Zero's ice, but no Sub-Zero. There's something back in the Ice Path that we could open, but we don't know how. We have to blast the Statue Courtyard open. Anybody else think something - something - is wrong here?! I don't know what, but something is!"

"Uh,  _yeah_!" Takeda huffed. "It's the Netherrealm! What did you expect?"

"Not fucking  _this_! By the way, you still have his ice-ball, right?"

"Yeah. It keeps freezing my pants to my thighs. Why?"

"I don't know. Just hold on to it. If we find Sub-Zero he may need it. How the fuck does this place look untouched, but there were clearly people here?"

With each word Cassie said, Takeda felt fear and panic rise in his chest, constricting him. The more she laid it all out, saying everything they all were probably thinking, the more this place didn't make sense. The more this place didn't make sense, the more surreal it sounded. It was all some big illusion, and the more time they spent there, the more ensnared in the illusion they became until they were trapped. They could never break free. This entire place felt like some cruel prank, like they were all going to wake up in Quan Chi's fortress.

"Cassie, we don't  _know_ ," Jacqui said. "We're trying to figure this out just as much as you. Listen, it sounds like we're stuck here for now." Takeda opened his mouth to protest. They couldn't leave! Not yet. Not when everybody was potentially so close. But Jacqui cut him off. "For now!" she repeated. "We can't get in the mausoleum, and we can't get into the Temple. And we don't have any real proof that anybody is in either of those places, either. The only place that's accessible to us is Spider Hell. I say we go down there-"

"We can't! We can't leave them," Takeda said.

"You think I  _want_  to? There's no proof! How can we justify staying here when everyone could be in the mausoleum or even in the spider caves? We  _have_  to move!" It hurt Takeda's heart to hear it. To even conceptualize abandonment. It bled from his heart down into his stomach, weighing his shoulders down. The looming threat of 'what if' was there, so large it was impossible to ignore. Always there at the back of every situation. It halted decisions and made people second-guess everything.

What if Hanzo or Kenshi were in there? What if they were dead? What if they found everyone, but Raiden couldn't get them back? What if Fujin couldn't get to them? What if they took too long, and were assumed K.I.A.? What if, what if, what if-

What ifs were the worst kinds of questions to ask. Because they force Takeda to look at their situation - to the very thing he wanted to avoid - and weigh just how the consequences play out. From there the questions spiral directly downward into the worst-case scenarios and their effects, and then he believed they were going to come to be, no matter how skewed they became. No matter how screwed he thought he was by avoiding the problem, he'd be ten times more screwed if the worst-case scenario came to fruition.

"Takeda," Jacqui continued. "I don't want to leave anybody if we can help it. But right now, we can't. I'm sorry, okay? I know the possibility is there, but without any real proof either way, we have to keep moving. We can't wait around for something to happen. We have to keep going."

" . . . I know. Is there anything else with the graveyard we could do?" he asked. "Not to stay any longer, I swear. Just to do a thorough check."

"I don't think so," Cassie said. "Jacqui and I have been sweeping the perimeter, like we said. We just need to finish this side, then the side that heads back towards the tunnel, and then we're done here. There's nothing on any of the graves, either."

"Okay," he nodded. "Let's-" His throat seized, and he swallowed thickly. "Let's go," he said, despite his heart rolling in his stomach again. " _I'm sorry, dad_ ," he sent towards the ice, just in case somebody, anybody, could hear it. " _I'm sorry, Master Hanzo. If you're in there, we'll be back. I promise. With Liu Kang's fire, or something to get you out. Hang tight_."

Jacqui grabbed his hand and gave it a quick squeeze, but then pulled him along, tugging him away from the Temple. He didn't want to look away. For some reason, he felt that if he looked away, then everybody and everything within the Temple behind that ice would be lost to him forever. Like he'd never be able to see any of it again. With reluctance, he tugged his eyes away, and turned away from it, resisting the urge to check over his shoulder.

He stared down the wall, and noticed that there looked to be a small inlet - kind of like the one that contained Sub-Zero's ice. Just a part of the wall that squared out. Only a few feet wide. Cassie and Jin made it to the inlet first, and Jin even peered around the corner into it just to make sure there wasn't anything in there. But suddenly, Jin gasped, withdrawing away from the inlet. His face paled, so quickly Takeda thought he would be sick. He covered his mouth with his hand and turned away from the inlet.

"Gods . . . " he breathed.

Takeda and Jacqui inched forward, but he could only see a pair of boots.


	12. Chapter 12

He took a step closer and he saw more details on the boots. Black leather, soft-looking so they were probably well-worn. They had a silver plate on the top to protect the top of the foot. The greaves were make-shift. They were just one long metal plate strapped over the boots with buckles around his the calves. Two or three buckles. The boots ended under the knees, and Takeda took another step forward. Black pants with a single blue stripe down the front of each leg tucked into the top of the boots.

Above the legs there was a dark brown, leather belt, with a square gold clasp in the middle. It had some Chinese symbol on it that Takeda didn't know. A piece of blue cloth lay hanging from the clasp, with a white dragon embroidered into it.

Takeda took another step closer, and the wall ended. He had an unimpeded view of the person laying there.

Clipped to the sides of the belt and hanging down were thick, blue, leather flaps to protect his legs and three more brown buckles that wrapped the whole way around his body and clipped together in the front.

He saw what made Jin react that strongly. It was revolting. It smelled like death - that dense smell that stuck to his nose and the back of his throat. Takeda almost retched from the smell, but at the sight he saw, he nearly doubled over.

Above the belt, the body just . . . ended. There was no upper half to speak of. Goopy, frozen blood was spattered in a perfect arc around the top of the waist, like the person was ripped violently in half. And scattered about in the puddle like tentacles were the tendrils and tissues of intestines, leading back into the legs.

"G-god-" he croaked, heaving as he turned away. He inhaled another whiff of the stench of death, and had to walk away a few steps. His eyes watered, his stomach churned. He was sure he would be sick.

He could hear the others reacting just as violently as him. Jacqui gasped. Cassie made a throaty noise of disgust. "Where's his other half?" Cassie said, and the mental image assaulted Takeda again. His stomach heaved and he lurched forward, further away from it.

"Look. Over there," Jin said. His voice sounded pinched, and when Takeda looked back at him, keeping his eyes above the snow, he had his nose pinched with his fingers. Blocking out the awful smell. Takeda followed his hand, because it was pointing up and away from the lower half. But when he looked he wished he hadn't.

Seeing the other half of the body confirmed what he already knew, but was avoiding thinking about. It was Sub-Zero. His top half was dragged halfway up the rocks around the inclosure. His vest flapped haphazardly around his chest with no belt to root itself in. His mouth was locked open in a silent scream and his crystal blue eyes were dead and staring in permanent shock at the pain of being eviscerated. He had snowflakes peppered in his beard, so he had been there for a while.

His one arm was extended forward, and upon closer inspection, his hand was nearly ripped off at the wrist. Bloody gums of membranes held it together, but barely, and he was missing some fingers. If Takeda had to guess, the wolves ripped him apart - no . . . ate him apart . . . then tried to drag him away by his hand before attacking the four of them.

They wouldn't have had to try very hard. His ribs were exposed through his chest, picked clean by claws and teeth, and bits of rotting flesh scattered behind, in the trail of blood from where he was dragged.

"Shit," Cassie said. "God, that's . . . that's . . . "

"Unfortunate?" Jacqui offered weakly.

" . . . Um . . . shit."

"What do we do?" Jacqui asked.

" . . . Get him down, I guess?" Cassie said. "Someone help me-"

"No. No way," Jin said, shaking his head. "We're not dragging him back down here. Number one, that's disgusting. Number two, there's no hope for him now."

"This is an S & R. We need to."

"There's nothing in the rules of an S & R about taking a dead body back with us."

"There is in the M.I.A. and K.I.A. protocol," Cassie fought back.

"He's not in the military. And he smells. Awful," Jin said, and the smell assaulted Takeda's senses again. He resisted the urge to retch, instead plugging his nose like Jin.

Cassie gestured wildly to both halves of him. "We can't just leave him here like this. Who cares if he smells? We need to take him back!"

Jin rolled his eyes. "Cass, look at him. Predators have already ripped him apart and ate a lot of him. We're  _really_  going to try and take him back to base like this? What're we gonna do, ship him in pieces back to the Lin Kuei for a proper ceremony-?"

"No, of course not! Don't be stupid!"

"Okay, also, why do you think the wolves flipped when we got so close? They were protecting their kill. If we want them to stay away from us while we pass through here, we'll let them have him."

"The wolves flipped because they're Netherrealm Hell Hounds and we're human beings for them to eat! Either way, you want to toss somebody to the wolves? Let them eat the rest of him here? That's cruel, Jin. That's really fucking cruel."

"Fine! Then  _you_  carry him - both halves of him!  _You_  carry him through the Spider Caves, and you carry him into the mausoleum and you carry him back and let his intestines slap in the snow while you walk-"

"Jin, that's gross!" Jacqui said. She looked green, and Takeda bet he looked the same.

"Well, what else is she gonna do?  _She_  wants to take him, so  _she_  can carry his legs over her shoulder and drag his upper body behind her by his other hand."

"I'm not  _saying_  I want to take him with us, asshole! I'm just saying that I don't want to just leave him here to be eaten. That's super . . . undignified. He's Sub-Zero. He's the Grandmaster of the Lin Kuei. That's just . . . "

Takeda knew what she was thinking. It was different when they were looking at a real person. What Jin had said before was true. They had killed monsters before. Unimaginable creatures. In unimaginable ways. They had ripped spines out of bodies. They had punched holes through bodies. They had shot kneecaps and severed limbs and done ridiculously awful things to mindless creatures.

It was different with a real person. A real person who they had talked to, fought with, fought against, taken advice from. Known personally. Sub-Zero came to their aid during Shinnok's invasion. He didn't deserve this, and seeing him so defeated and . . . he guessed humiliated, was a tough blow.

"We could always take him back - just to the front gate," Takeda suggested. He really didn't want to drag Sub-Zero's pieces - ugh - all the way back to the front. He really wanted to get as far away from his body as possible. It looked cold and frozen and waxy, like it wasn't real. It looked frozen in a moment, and at any point the time would unfreeze and he would come to life and start screaming. "Did anybody bring, like, an extra sleeping bag, or a tarp or something?" They could lay him on the tarp and drag him behind them. Takeda pictured it in his head, more than sure if he tried to say it out loud he would lose his lunch. His stomach lurched again, and felt like it was sitting under his sternum. He sent the picture to the three of them.

"That's a good idea," Cassie said, "but I didn't bring anything."

"Me either," Jacqui said.

"What about the tent tarp?" Jin asked, apparently on board with this solution.

"You really want to make our tent tarp smell like death?" Cassie countered.

"Oh. Right," Jin said.

"I think we have to leave him here," Cassie said after a while of thick silence. "There's nowhere else for us to go. We have to go back to the spider place. Until we find Kenshi's sword, that's the only place we can go. I don't want to take him down there with us. He's too . . . unwieldy to drag around. And the blood and stuff will be an easy target for those giant ass spiders. It might even attract them to us. We need to be ready and available to fight them. We can't do that if we have a body with us-"

"But I'm saying leave him at the front gate," Takeda said. "It's the best compromise I can think of. We're not leaving him here, but we're not taking him with us into the Caves, or wherever. He . . . could still be taken by predators but if they take him he's no worse off than he was now."

"We don't have any way to drag him around, though," Cassie said.

"What are we going to do if we find someone else?" Jacqui asked. "What if we find my dad alive, but too weak to do anything? Are we just going to leave him, too? Just leave his body here to the animals?"

" . . . I don't  _know_ , okay? I'm just trying to make the best decision for the situation we're in. Right now, I think we need to leave him here." She took one last glance at his- . . . pieces, a frown on her face and what Takeda thought looked like pity in her eyes. He could practically feel her internal conflict coming from her face. "Does anybody disagree? Think about the logistics. We  _can't_  take him with us." To Takeda, it sounded like she said that to convince herself more so than the rest of them.

"Let's leave him," Takeda said, but his voice sounded small and lost. He was still in shock and disgust to some degree, he figured. Sub-Zero's loss still hadn't hit him yet. All he wanted right now was to get away from the stench and the sight before he lost the canned lunch they ate a little bit ago.

"Leave him," Jacqui said softly.

"Let's leave him," Jin said.

"Okay. Should we . . . bury him or something, though?" Cassie asked.

"We can't. We don't have anything to . . . " Jacqui said, patting her pockets as though she could find a shovel or something to help them dig a hole.

"Oh. Right. Sorry. Okay. Let's keep going. We have to go back to Boneland to get to the Spider Caves. Time check," she said.

Jin checked the stopwatch on his wrist. "Stopwatch says four hours, thirteen minutes."

"Cool. Let's get to the Spider Caves, and we'll decide if we want to rest early, or keep going."

Nobody moved right away. Takeda shuffled awkwardly towards the tunnel, and the others kind of did the same, but none of them fully turned away from Sub-Zero. Takeda had that same sensation as before that they would never see Sub-Zero again - and perhaps they never would. Actually, Takeda realized, they definitely never would. Not unless they found Liu Kang's Dragon's Fire and came back for the Temple. And then they'd have to walk past his half-decomposed body again, that they abandoned in the first place, assuming his body was still there, and the wolves hadn't drug him off to finish what he started. That was the worst part about it, to him. He could understand that his body would be a burden, if it were him, but he would at least hope he wasn't left out to deteriorate. He would hope someone would have the courtesy to bury him or something.

He would hope that if they found Kenshi like that . . . he was left in honor.

But they wouldn't find Kenshi like that. Or Jax, or Raiden, or anybody.

Poor Sub-Zero, but Takeda hoped he would be the only casualty.

Still, though, leaving Sub-Zero here, only to come back past it for the Temple, seemed cruel, like Cassie said. Did anybody even realize the fact that they'd be back?

"You guys know we'll be back here, right?" he asked them. "We'll have to come back when we find the Dragon's Fire to open the Temple."

"Yeah," Cassie said. "Yeah, yeah!" She snapped her fingers, and an idea sparked in her eyes. "We can bring him back with us  _then_ , after we open everything up!" she said. "It'll be a lot easier to deal with stuff in general when there's no more exploring to do!"

"Okay, but that doesn't solve the problem of what we're going to do with him in the meantime," Jacqui countered.

" . . . Oh, yeah."

"Yeah, like, we'd still have to leave him out here in the snow until we get back."

" . . . We're about to leave a dead body in the snow, that's not even cold, to rot even further," Takeda said, hoping to imply his thoughts on that.

"Wait, wait, wait- we have his  _ice_ ," Jin said, throwing his arms out like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "We have his stupid  _ice_! The cold would help preserve him, wouldn't it? Just until we're able to figure out what to do with him. Why don't we just use his ice, encase him a bit - at bare minimum frost him over - and then that way it'll keep predators off of him, and it'll keep him from . . . rotting more."

Takeda reached into one of the pouches of his backpack, but when his fingers even got close to the ball, they numbed up immediately. "Agh, shit. Anybody have a towel or something I can grab this with?"

The three of them took a moment to look, but instead of waiting on them, Takeda unraveled the scarf from around his neck and twirled it around his hand instead as a buffer. He opened the flap on his backpack and saw the frost coating the entire inside of that pocket. He grabbed the ball of ice and held it out to Jin, wrapped in its little bundle.

"You think you'd be able to use this? The Shaolin are more elementally versed than the Shirai Ryu. I only know how to use a bit of fire."

"I can probably figure it out," Jin said, nodding as he took the ball from Takeda. He cradled it in the scarf, pulling it away so that a small portion of the ice was exposed. He walked as close to Sub-Zero's legs as he wanted to get, and closed his eyes.

He took several deep breaths, and Takeda realized he was doing a sort of mini-meditation. He opened his eyes after a few seconds, and held the ball straight out in front of him. He said something in Chinese, " _Bīng, wǒ zhǐhuī nǐ_ ," and as if it awoke the ball, it started to glow blue with a sharp edge, like the cold power inside of it. Sub-Zero's form glowed as well with the same light, and suddenly there was a flash so bright the four of them had to shield their eyes. When they recovered, Sub-Zero's legs were encased in a thick layer of ice.

It almost looked like crystal, or diamond. The little geometric fractals curved and contoured to Sub-Zero's form. His waist looked a little strange, because the white snow and Sub-Zero's blues and blacks maintained a certain color scheme and it was interrupted by the shocking red of his blood and other things around the body. But it was all frozen over.

Jin got as close as he could to the rest of Sub-Zero, even going as far as to climb a little bit up the mountain. The ball glowed, the flash glared, and Sub-Zero's top half was encased in ice too. Jin climbed back down, handing the ice ball back to Takeda.

"Way to go, man," Takeda told him.

"Thanks." Takeda tucked the ice back into a pouch on his pocket and moved to wrap the scarf around his neck, but it was freezing cold, and had a bit of frost on it as well. Instead, he decided to keep it in the pocket with the ball. It could be the Ice Buffer.

"Okay, he looks good. Nice job, Jin," Cassie said. "Let's head back to the front, and when we get there, we'll decide what to do. We're definitely going down into the caves, but we're going to decide if we want to rest before we go. Plus, Jin, you're gonna want to update the books and stuff, right?"

" . . . Yeah," he said, but his voice sounded far away and distant. He was staring at Sub-Zero's ice pieces, and Cassie snapped her fingers in front of his face.

"Hey. You in there?"

"Yeah - hey, let's do one more thing before we leave. I'm gonna chant a quick mantra. It won't take very long, like, ten minutes. Chinese Buddhists use them for invocations of Buddha. It's sort of like a prayer or blessing for his soul. Kind of like how people say last words over a coffin for Western funerals."

"Yeah, that's a good idea," Cassie said. "That's really kind of you."

Jin shrugged, and the four of them stood quietly and waited while Jin sang the solemn chant. From what Takeda could hear, it was the same words over and over and over again, inflected in exactly the same way. Sometimes the contour of the melody would change. In the middle it seemed to get higher and higher but otherwise, it was droned in exactly the same way.

Jin slowly faded out and sang the mantra for the last time. When it was finished, he nodded and turned away from Sub-Zero. "Okay. Let's go."

It felt better to leave after that. Like he received his last rights and blessing, and his body was protected until they found a way to get him out of here. The four of them started walking back the way they came, back towards the tunnel.

"That was really nice, Jin," Jacqui said. "What was it, again?"

"Just a quick Buddhist mantra. ' _Om Mani Padme Hum_ '. It's usually sung at Chinese funerals to invoke feelings of compassion and Chenrezig who's like the embodiment of compassion. Chinese funeral traditions are pretty extensive, and can sometimes take up to, like, thirty days."

"Huh." Jacqui said. Jin was like an encyclopedia. He knew a little about everything.

The tunnel loomed ahead of them again, but without the threat of wolves behind them, it seemed much less threatening. Cassie pushed to the front, and pulled one of her pistols from her holster and held her hand out straight behind her.

"Glowstick me," she said.

Takeda pulled it from his belt and slapped it into her hand, and she held it straight out in front of her. "Not taking any chances," she said. "Let's go."


End file.
